


No Place Like Home

by MadMissMim



Series: Full Circle [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Attempted Fratricide (unintentional?), Babies Born of Rape/Non-con, Blood, Consumption of Copious Alcohol, Daddy Issues, Demons, Dissing the Tourist Trade and Tourist Towns Everywhere, F/M, Gore, Half-demons, Patricide (totally intentional), Psychiatric Hospital Visit, Spells and Bindings and other Supernatural Weirdness, Very Lecherous Girlfriend, Violence, mentions of past rape/non-con, small town life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-13
Updated: 2017-07-13
Packaged: 2018-12-01 19:58:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11493687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadMissMim/pseuds/MadMissMim
Summary: Caleb Hill wasn’t always the lone wolf P.I. of the supernatural community. He used to live the perfect small town life – had friends, played football, had a loving mom and stepdad and gaggle of half-sibs. Then one day dear old dad tore that perfect life to shreds, and his family with it. Now his half-sister Carla, his only living family, needs him back home. What else is a big brother to do?





	No Place Like Home

**Author's Note:**

> Really, I should have posted this already, but I had some craziness to contend with. First, I had trouble reading back through it cuz I go through phases sometimes where I get sleepy (like narcoleptic style sleepy) whenever I read over my own work. So, I'd try to edit and end up passing out after a paragraph. Great for the insomnia but lousy for the editing process. Also, I'm getting close to the deadline for finishing the stories for the stupid bet (see my FF.net profile for details about the stupid bet). Lastly, my cat almost died. For reals. She became critically anemic and we had to cough up $1100 to get her a transfusion and now I have to give her 2 pills a day. Anybody who's ever given a cat a pill will understand the Herculean effort even 1 pill requires. And this is my huge cat, too. She weighs 25 lbs and she's long and fat and just generally ginormous with scary, wicked-long claws. Anyway, the story is finally here, all troubles aside. Hope it's worth the wait.

      When people vanish from our lives, are they ever really forgotten? Or does the memory of those people lie in wait like a predator stalking its prey, watching for the perfect moment to ambush the unwary? It’s not that I ever really forgot the family that I’d lost, but I had struggled to purge my mind of the memory of _how_ they were lost. I mean, who wants to remember seeing their family brutally murdered by a demon. In the process of pushing away that hideous memory, I inadvertently ignored the happier memories of my family. In essence, I shoved my family so far into the back of my mind that they may as well have not lived at all. Callous? Maybe . . .

      Unfortunately, my girlfriend thought it was very callous. She had no problem voicing that opinion either – but that’s my girlfriend for you. Officer Jodi Tenan was nothing if not opinionated. It’s a miracle I’ve kept her around so long. But, of course, such unworthy thoughts are followed directly by the thought that it’s more of a miracle that _she’s_ kept _me_ around so long.

      Tenan and I have been dating for almost a year. We met over the corpse of a girl who, ironically enough, had been my previous night’s blind date. Before you get the wrong idea, I didn’t kill the girl. She died of _super-_ natural causes – cue the rim shot. Tenan was hooked from the first minute we met. She was hitting on me while she was questioning me about the dead girl in my bed. I thought it was creepy at the time. Looking back, I still think it’s creepy. Later, while solving the case of my dead one night stand, Tenan discovered my darkest of dark secrets. She saw with her own eyes the secret face hidden by the human masks I present to the world. She found out the hard way that the guy she’d been sexually harassing was a half-demon. She impressed me no end by proving that she really didn’t care what I was as long as I was fighting the good fight – and putting out, let’s not forget putting out.

      Tenan is also one of the few people who know what really happened to my family. My father, the source of my demon half, sliced and diced them right in front of me on my fourteenth birthday. There was only one survivor, my half-sister Carla. She’s in a loony bin just outside of my hometown. Losing my stepdad, mom, two half-sisters, and infant half-brother was bad enough. Carla is a whole new kind of bad. She’s terrified of me. I can’t go anywhere near her because I look too much like my father. Her fragile health can’t bear up to the kind of fear that seeing me gives her. It tweaks me fiercely that I can’t do a damn thing to help her except stay away. That’s why I try not to think about it.

      Then came the phone call. It was Carla’s doctor back in Maine. He sounded like he was either about to panic or do the dance of joy. He wouldn’t tell me what was going on. He just told me I needed to come home right away. Tenan was in my office visiting me when the doc called. She overheard the whole thing. From this day forward, I hereby vow to never again hit the “speakerphone” button to save time. “But you have to go,” persisted Tenan for perhaps the tenth time. “She’s your sister. For all you know she could be at death’s door, heaven forefend.”

      “I know she’s my sister, damn it! In case you hadn’t noticed, _that’s_ the problem,” I countered, wearily pulling a hand over my face. “I left that town at fifteen, and I haven’t gone back once. Not once. Can you imagine what it would be like? It’s a small town with nothing going on to gossip about most of the time. What happened to my family was a big deal. They’re probably still talking about it. And even when I played football, I was never popular. I was a weirdo as far as they were concerned. I was actually the subject of several PTA meetings. After my family got killed, everybody in town started whispering that it was my fault or that I had killed them myself. I don’t need to hear that. I may not be the one in the loony bin, but I’m just as sensitive about the subject as Carla and just as likely to have a total meltdown. The difference, of course, being that my meltdown would be a whole lot scarier than hers and would probably take out half the town.”

      “It’s no use being a sissy,” said Tenan loftily with a dismissive wave. “If you miss out on this because you’re being a big old chicken than you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. You know that _I_ won’t let you live it down either.”

      “One of these days, woman, you’re going to be the death of me,” I said with a long sigh.

      “So you’ll go?” she asked, quirking one eyebrow at me.

      “I’ll go,” I growled. “If only to shut you up about it.”

      “Good,” she said smugly. “I’m overdue for a vacation. I’ll come by and pick you up tomorrow morning.”

      The next morning, against my better judgment, I was packed and ready to go when Tenan showed up bright and early. Bless her, she’d at least thought to bring me coffee. I don’t do mornings as a general rule. The sun and I are not friends. It’s not that I hate the sun, like some pseudo-vampire-wannabe Goth kid. No, the problem is that the sun hates me. I don’t tan. I scorch. I go from pasty pale to crispy critter in minutes – _literally_ minutes. It’s not always that bad, but it happens often enough to be a serious concern. Most of the time, I can deal as long as I’m not directly in the line of fire, in a manner of speaking. It’s why I always wear my leather jacket and a hoodie underneath it, even in the middle of summer – it’s like carrying around my own personal sauna sometimes, but you’d be surprised what people can get used to with sufficient motivation. And I have a pair of mirrored sunglasses that would make the Terminator drool. Unfortunately, these precautions would only do so much seeing as how we were about to be driving right into the sun for the first part of the day.

      It took us the better part of two days to reach Maine, and once we were there it was another four hours before we reached my hometown. The place hadn’t changed a bit in the sixteen years I’d been gone. It was the same sleepy seaside tourist trap it had always been, filled with quiet streets and quaint little shops overlooking the quay. Half a century ago, the fish moved on, leaving the local fishing industry high and dry, in a manner of speaking. In answer to the sudden economic downturn, the town had begun a ten-year round of renovations that would make the place into the sort of out-of-the-way vacation spot that yuppies and other upscale punters paid big money to visit.

      There were no less than three bed & breakfasts, two inns, and a long line of pretty wharf-side shops to entice the deep of pocket and shallow of mind. I made Tenan drive right past all those places. The place we were heading for was just outside of town, hidden away where it wouldn’t offend the tourists. The Panwick County Mental Health Center had been there almost as long as the town itself, and it looked like it. Despite countless attempts at renovation and rebuilding, and a few name changes here and there, it couldn’t manage to look like anything but what it was – a place to stick inconveniently crazy people so the town didn’t have to be bothered by them. The townsfolk wouldn’t even speak of it by name, simply calling it PC. They treated the place like some kind of boogeyman to scare their children into good behavior. “Be good, little boy, or you’ll end up in PC.”

      Sadly, PC is where my sister Carla resides, so that’s where we needed to go. The huge white building tended to creep up on the unwary. One minute you were rounding a bend on a gravelly country road, the next minute you were faced with ten stories of white stucco edifice. It’s, literally, the end of the road. Once you shake off the shock of encountering the building, the first thing you see is a huge glowing sign pronouncing its name and purpose. Even without the sign, the place all but screamed, “I’m a loony bin!” Shuddering a little, I directed Tenan to the visitor parking.

      The nurse at the front desk looked vaguely familiar. I gave her my name – my real name, which isn’t Caleb Hill, oddly enough, despite what my business cards and driver’s license will tell you. Recognition dawned on the woman and she plastered a patently false smile on her perfectly painted face. “Wow, I never would have expected to see you back,” said the woman. “Welcome home, John. Here to see your sister?”

      “Yes, is Dr. Streiger available?” I asked. I glanced surreptitiously at the woman’s employee badge and as soon as I saw the name I had to stifle a groan. Debbie Hilter, former captain of the cheerleading squad and possibly the most unpleasant girl I’d ever met. My friends and I used to call her Hitler – and for good reason. She was one of those people that got their kicks putting down people who were different. “Well, well, well, I thought you went off to college somewhere on a scholarship,” I said, my friendly tone falling intentionally flat.

      “I was going to become a doctor, but my grades weren’t good enough. So I came home and got a job as a nurse,” she explained, embarrassed but hiding it well. “And what about you? You just up and vanished after the funeral. Where’d you go?”

      “You know how it is,” I said, the very picture of nonchalance. “I bounced between places for a while. Now I’m just living the city life as far from the smell of fish as my feet could carry me.”

      “I hear you!” said Debbie, actually showing some sort of genuine camaraderie. For all their differences, there was one thing that all the kids of Brooks Hollow had in common – they all wanted out, by any means necessary. Debbie and I were no exception. “I actually forgot how bad it smells around here while I was gone. When I came back, I had to get used to it all over again.”

      “Yeah, well, I’m hoping I’m not in town long enough to get used to it again,” I told her honestly.

      “I’ll page Dr. Streiger for you,” said Debbie, more than willing to expedite my departure. She made a quick call on the multi-line phone, and when she hung up she looked up and smiled that fake smile again. “He’s already gone home for the night, but he’ll be back bright and early in the morning.”

      “I guess I’ll have to wait then,” I said with an annoyed sigh. In a town like Brooks Hollow, not many people worked past five o’clock. The only things open in the evening were the restaurants and the town’s only bar. “Please let him know I’m coming by in the morning around ten.”

      “Sure thing,” said Debbie, scribbling on a pink memo pad. Tenan and I turned and started to walk away, but Debbie called out for us to wait. “Hey, John, I know you probably won’t be interested, but a bunch of us are getting together at Buck’s tonight. It’s pretty much the only thing to do around here anyway. You should come by.”

      “Maybe,” I told her uneasily. “We’ve been driving for two days straight. We’re probably just going to head for one of the inns and crash for the night.”

      “All right then,” said Debbie. We all waved to keep up the pretense of politeness then Tenan and I headed out the door.

      “What’s Buck’s?” asked Tenan once we were back in the car.

      “Buck’s Last Stand is the only bar in town. It’s almost a tradition for the underage crowd to try to sneak in from time to time. I don’t think I’d feel right _legitimately_ walking into the place,” I told her, and she actually laughed.

      “I just can’t believe you came from a place like this,” said Tenan, turning onto Joseph Brooks Avenue where the largest concentration of cutesy little shops congregated. It was named for the town’s founder, a fishing boat captain and reprobate that settled there because he was hiding out from his wife and eight kids. There was a statue of him in front of city hall. After hearing the real tale of the founding, I’d always spared a giggle for the old drunk when I passed.

      “Yeah, well, my mother settled here because it was quiet and picturesque, and she needed a bit of quiet at that point in her life,” I said. She’d wanted to live in a peaceful place where she could raise her son in obscurity, and she’d succeeded for fourteen years, basking in the small town life. She’d had it all, the loving husband, the white picket fence, the horde of children, and even a little shop on the row where she sold candles and teas. And that’s where I finally made Tenan pull over.

      I got out of the car and went to the door. I knew it wouldn’t be locked. The current owner probably already knew I was coming. “Hello?” I called as Tenan finally entered behind me. The place was just as I remembered it, dimly lit and filled with the earthy scents of melting wax and dried herbs – and dust. No matter how often it was cleaned, the shop always smelled of dust. I sneezed and a warm, rich voice called out, “Bless you.”

      The blessing made me sneeze a second time, and I glared at Meredith as I pulled a tissue from my pocket. “Aunt Merry, that’s just mean,” I admonished her. She grinned at me as she approached.

      “As in _the_ Aunt Merry, the one who sent you reinforcements just in the nick of time?” asked Tenan. Aunt Merry wasn’t really my aunt, but she was my mother’s best friend – and one of the most talented psychics I’ve ever met. She’s a seer, and her visions of the past, present, and future are near-legendary for their accuracy. Several months ago, it was one of her visions that had led her to send my old childhood buddies to me just in time to save me from a pair of childhood enemies who’d turned to murder and the dark arts. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you,” said Tenan with her most charming smile.

      “You must be Jodi,” said Aunt Merry, grasping Tenan’s hand. “Let me look at you girl.” Aunt Merry looked Tenan up and down, walking a slow circle around her then she smiled up at me. Knowing Aunt Merry, she probably wasn’t even bothering to notice Tenan’s many outer charms – like the fact that she’s a lean, well-built blond with smooth skin the color of honeyed cream. No, Aunt Merry was looking at something only she could see. “You did good kid. She’s got a good head on her shoulders. You’d do well to listen to her.”

      “I’m here, aren’t I?” I retorted, and Aunt Merry patted me on the cheek.

      “Good boy,” she said and glided away toward the back of the shop. “You know, this place just hasn’t been the same without your mother around. She made the best candles anywhere.”

      “But it’s nice to see you haven’t made any drastic changes,” I said, looking around at all the cherry wood shelves lined neatly with labeled jars of tea and candles artfully wrapped with tissue paper.

      “She loved this place,” said Meredith with a sad smile. “I’d never dream of changing it, though I did have to update a few things – like the wiring.”

      “Well, we all knew that was coming,” I said with a shrug. As we neared the counter at the back I spotted a picture hanging on the wall and took it down to look at it more closely. Etched into the wooden frame were the words, “In loving memory”.

      Tenan leaned in close to peer down at it. “Is that your family?” she asked, and I nodded absently. They were all smiling and huddled close so they’d all fit in the picture. All of them were either red-haired like my stepdad or golden-haired like my mother – except for me, of course, with my black hair and black eyes. I stood out like a tennis ball in a golf ball bin. My mother – beautiful and smiling that glittering smile of hers – held my baby brother in her arms. Her husband – broad-shouldered and tall but with a kind face – stood close by his wife with one hand on Carla’s shoulder and the other on Maranda’s shoulder. As the tallest children, my sister Sandra and I were kneeling in front.

      “That’s my mother Diane and my stepdad Thomas, and the little one my mom is holding is Joseph. This was taken right after he was born. There’s Maranda, the oldest of the sibs, a year younger than me. Next to her is Carla, the youngest until Joseph came along. Next to me is Sandra, the middle sib,” I offered, pointing out each person as I named them.

      “You were so cute,” marveled Tenan.

      “Cute isn’t the word I would have used,” said Aunt Merry with a bright laugh. “He was precocious is what he was, not to mention sarcastic. And look here.” She took down a framed newspaper article. “He was the first freshman to be recruited for the junior varsity football team.” The picture was of a particularly vicious tackle that took down a boy twice my size. “When you play football in a small town, you become big news. There are at least four different articles about our prodigal son’s brief football career. They called him the Living Bullet, because anybody he hit went down and stayed down.”

      “She doesn’t need to be looking at those,” I said quickly, hanging the article back on the wall.

      “Well, if you take her down to Buck’s, you’ll see nothing but,” snorted Merry with one of her knowing smiles.

      “Who says I’m going anywhere near Buck’s?” I demanded, giving her a narrow-eyed stare. “I hadn’t intended to, and as a matter of fact, I plan on leaving right after I talk to Carla’s doctor tomorrow.”

      “We’ll see about that,” said Aunt Merry, and her smile was secretive but also sad. “Now, why don’t you children head off to the inn and let me close up. We can talk tomorrow.”

      Letting out a frustrated sigh, I gave Merry her hug good-bye and let her herd us out into the cold. The wind had picked up while we were visiting, and it carried to us the stench of the harbor. Not much fishing went on around Brooks Hollow anymore, but somehow, even after fifty years, it still reeked of fish and salty copper. Ah, the joys of the sea. Most locals don’t notice the pervasive stench, having lived with it most of their lives. Tourists, however, always noticed it, breathing it in like it was perfume and pretending that it was exhilarating. The truth of the matter is that it’s nauseating not exhilarating.

      I shivered as the wind found its way into my jacket. I really should have packed more sweaters. The wind had a bite like a piranha, mercilessly gnawing on any exposed flesh and even some that should have been safe. Luckily, the inn wasn’t very far away. That meant that, although the car didn’t have time to warm up, we didn’t have to suffer the cold for long. The place was called New Hollow Inn, though it hadn’t been new for forty odd years. It was still the nicer of the two inns – not to mention the furthest away from the harbor.

      After we checked in, we unloaded the car and ordered a pizza from the only pizza place in town. Apparently, my silence while we waited for the aforementioned pizza annoyed Tenan. She made a little sound of irritation and paced to the window, staring out at the sleeping town. “You know, your file mentioned something about being on the football team, but somehow I just couldn’t really picture it. I was a little surprised to find out you didn’t just play football but were a local hero,” she said, and I could tell she was baiting me.

      “I only played football because I liked having society’s go-ahead to beat up jocks,” I told her tersely.

      “ _That_ sounds more like you,” conceded Tenan.

      “And I wasn’t any kind of local hero. There just wasn’t anything going on in this town but high school sports and the tourist trade,” I explained blandly.

      “I would think, given your overly eventful youth, that the quiet would be a good thing,” said Tenan, and for that little comment she was treated to a full out laugh.

      “Let me impart a little wisdom I’ve learned over the years,” I began, getting up as I spoke because I could smell the pizza coming down the hall. “The bigger the population, the easier it is to blend in. In the city, I’m just one more eccentric. Out here I was the resident weirdo. In a place like this, you either fit in or you may as well tattoo the word pariah across your forehead. A leper would have had an easier time blending in around here.”

      “But you had friends at least,” said Tenan, desperate now.

      “Those came later,” I told her, stealing the first slice of pizza before setting down the box. “My mom felt bad for me so she convinced some of her more esoterically involved friends to bring their children and apprentices here. So yeah, the only freaks here besides me were mail order and they didn’t stick around long. When puberty hit, they had to separate me and Simon by a few miles because it was too dangerous to put us together.” It’s not that me and Simon didn’t get along or anything, but Simon and I are supernatural opposites. Skin to skin contact usually causes smoke – and burn blisters. Needless to say, our mothers were concerned. “Shiro’s master took him off to Japan for training purposes. Abby and the twins stuck around, but that’s not exactly what I would call warm and fuzzy friends. You saw how well me and Abby got along, and the twins – well, to put it kindly, a life sentence in prison is better than they deserve, and not just because of their recent shenanigans. There was Cassie, of course – but you haven’t met her yet, and trust me when I say you don’t want to. She’s creepy and she’s cruel, and she really, really, really doesn’t like me.

      “You see, this place is picturesque and quiet. It’s like a Norman Rockwell painting most days. But a place like this also breeds intolerance the way the city breeds cockroaches. The only supernatural creatures dumb enough to live here, all live in the woods and won’t come within a mile of town. They know as well as I do that the people here can be as superstitious as old school Puritans. I don’t just hate this place, I loathe it with a passion better reserved for serial killers and IRS auditors.” During the whole of this little speech I’d been steadily choking down pizza. It wasn’t good, but it was the only game in town. Coincidentally, I ran out of pizza about the same time I ran out of words.

      “If this place is so horrible then prove it,” said Tenan in challenge. “Take me to this bar of yours and let me meet some of these people for myself. I guarantee that there’s something good here that Your Royal Grumpiness just doesn’t want to admit to.”

      “Fine, whatever blows your skirt up, but don’t say I didn’t warn you,” I told her irately. “And you’re buying.”

      “Only if I get to take advantage of you once you’re drunk,” said Tenan, waggling her eyebrows lasciviously. Did I forget to mention that my girlfriend is a total lecher?

      Buck’s Last Stand is about as dingy and dank as a cave, with only neon beer signs providing any degree of light. It was also redolent with smoke, stale sweat, and alcohol of every persuasion – and a few other less savory elements I didn’t care to identify. It wasn’t terribly crowded, not by city standards, but for a small town bar it was fairly packed. Most of the crowd had congregated around a group of three tables that had all been shoved together. The surface of the make-shift long-table was cluttered with half-empty pitchers, half-empty bottles, and half-empty glasses. Last Stand’s only waitress was already delivering a new round to the raucous welcome of the patrons. She was a pretty little thing, short and with a tiny waist and pixie-like face that was hauntingly familiar.

      Then again most of the faces around the table were familiar, though half of them I couldn’t have put a name to with a gun to my head. Among them was Debbie Hitler . . . er, I mean, Hilter. She smiled in the broad friendly way of drunk people everywhere and waved us over to her. I held up one finger in a signal to hold off a minute and steered Tenan to the bar. The bartender was as familiar as the waitress, though he was at least a little more recognizable. Hopefully, he wouldn’t recognize me as easily. He wasn’t from Brooks Hollow. He was from the nearest neighboring town, and I had knocked him down so many times in football you’d swear he was my personal tackling dummy. It goes without saying there might be a bit of ill will there. Luckily, I was able to avoid direct eye contact, and we got our drinks without incident. I walked up to Debbie’s table with a double scotch to fortify me and the nagging suspicion that it was going to be a long night.

      “If it isn’t Brooks Hollow’s own prodigal son?” said the largest of the former jocks at the table. “The Living Bullet himself, back from the big bad world. Is this your girlfriend?”  
      “Yeah, this is Jodi Tenan,” I said, sipping the scotch with a bit more fervor than good scotch deserved. “Tenan, this is Gary,” I said pointing to the beefy speaker with my glass. “And of course, we have Derrick, Ian, Justine, Luke, and Sarah,” I continued pointing to each person around the table as I named them. I was actually a bit proud of myself for figuring out who everybody was.

      Sarah had really let herself go. In her cheerleading days she’d been all skin and bone with the sort of soft brown curls men tripped over themselves to run their fingers through. Now she looked like she had padded all that bone with a couple dozen boxes of Twinkies and her soft curls were cropped short soccer mom fashion. Justine was still the same miniature Barbie doll she’d been in high school, but I could tell by her scent that the fake smile on her face was reinforced with medication. Derrick had a beer gut and actually wore a suit and tie, having finally let go of the grunge look he’d clung to so hard in high school. Ian had let his buzz cut grow out and was sporting a pony tail and a Hawaiian shirt – he looked like a born-again bohemian. Luke hadn’t changed a bit, except for a bit of extra height. He still looked like an Arian youth with his blond hair, blue eyes, and perfect tan. He was even still wearing a polo shirt, khakis, and loafers, just like he’d worn every day in high school. Then again, when your father owned half the town appearances were everything.

      “I thought you said you were going to call it a night,” said Debbie, her words slurred.

      “I love the night life,” I replied with broad sarcasm.

      “Sit, sit,” said Gary, pulling up a couple chairs. We waited until everyone had scooted over to make room then sat down – or up, in this case, since these were the sort of tall chairs you had to hop onto. “So, what have you been doing with yourself all these years? After you vanished we started taking bets on whether you’d go all David Koresh on us?”

      “More like Dahmer,” I muttered, and Tenan elbowed me. “I run my own P.I. business.”

      “You’re a private dick?” sputtered Ian.

      “As opposed to a public dick?” I asked mildly. Ian’s expression changed to incomprehension, like he was trying to decide if he’d been insulted. When everybody else at the table started laughing, he settled for laughing along with them – much to my relief. The last thing I needed to do was get into a bar fight. It was time to start up some small talk to prevent any further comments about my profession. Nothing makes my mouth run away with me quite like smart-ass remarks about my business. “So, what’s everybody else doing now? I know Debbie’s working up at PC, but what do the rest of you do to keep biscuits on the table?”

      The answers to my question were somewhat garbled by the booze, but I was able to get the gist of it. Ian had taken over his parent’s book store, as we’d always known he would. Derrick was selling used cars at the dealership thirty miles away in the next town. He certainly looked like a used car salesman. It was hard to keep a straight face as he explained the woes of his job. Justine and Sarah were both housewives, which had been obvious at the start. Justine was married to the former senior class president. Sarah had married some guy who had come to town as tourist and never quite left after meeting Sarah – it was almost a little romantic. Sarah even had two kids and a dog. Her life was like a hallmark card waiting to happen. Justine on the other hand had no intention of ever having children, despite her parents’ pressuring – or maybe _because_ of her parents’ pressuring.

      As we were talking, more people joined our table until eventually we had to pull up a fourth table. Before long we had the entire football team and half the cheerleaders. Most of them I couldn’t put a name to, but after my fourth scotch, I didn’t really care. My girlfriend intrigued everyone almost as much as my mysterious arrival. To them, a big city cop was a novelty not to be passed up. They asked her a lot of questions about law enforcement on the mean streets – I just didn’t have the heart to tell them that our streets weren’t all that mean. Compared to other cities it was a fairly safe place to live, and there were lots of people like me and Tenan dedicated to keeping it that way. But compared to my tiny hometown, the city was a dangerous den of riotous people and countless health hazards. The whole thing was hilarious.

      When the jock posse left, Tenan and I stuck around a bit longer to recover our equilibrium. It was in that semi-peaceful interim that I finally realized why the waitress looked so familiar. It was also about the same time I decided it was high time to high tail it. The last thing I needed was for her to recognize me too. But wait . . . she should have already recognized me just by the company I had been keeping for the bulk of the night. She would have known who I was by the cat-calls shouted at me and the old nickname that had flown from everybody’s lips. Why hadn’t she said anything?

      “Did you ever think that maybe I haven’t said anything because I knew keeping quiet would make you squirm?” said a husky voice right beside my ear. I jumped about a mile, nearly upsetting the table and knocking over my chair in the process.

      I forced myself to calm down. No easy feat when facing my oldest, dearest enemy. “Cassandra, dear, I didn’t recognize you at first. You should have said ‘hello’ earlier, though preferably without sharp and/or heavy objects involved, if you please.”

      “John, dear – or is it Caleb now?” she asked with that slow smile that always gave me the creeps as a child. “I must admit, I always liked you’re middle name better anyway, so it’s a good change. ‘John’ just never seemed to suit you. I think it’s blasphemous enough that both of your names were taken from the bible, but it’s worse that one of those names happens to be boring.”

      I’m not too manly to admit that at that point I had inched around until Tenan was between me and Cassandra – and I was hoping wildly that Tenan had her gun with her. “I never would have imagined you working as a waitress. I pictured you more as the ‘makes money by putting curses on people for the sake of corporate espionage’ type,” I said, trying to sound like my usual flippant self.

      “Yes, well, I pictured you as the ‘good-for-nothing do-gooder that can’t even make enough money to pay rent because he’s too busy saving the day’ type. I suppose it’s good that at least one of us is paying attention,” she countered.

      “I really wish you _wouldn’t_ pay such close attention, actually,” I said, backing steadily toward the door and pulling Tenan with me. “It was great to see you again, really, but I think we should call it a night. It’s been a long day and we have to get up early tomorrow. Bye now.”

      “What was that all about?” asked Tenan as we walked a little ways into the cold, cold night. It was at least after midnight, the coldest part of night, when it was edging toward morning and fought harder against the eventual onset of the day’s warmth by offering up its bleakest chill. “Is she another ex-girlfriend you managed to piss off, like Abby?”

      “First of all, I’m pretty sure Abby was born pissed off, so nothing I said or did could have had much effect on her perpetual PMS,” I countered, a little annoyed that she was trying to side with Abby. “Secondly, I wouldn’t date Cassandra if you paid me a million dollars, bought me a private jet, and put me up in a mansion in the Hamptons. In general, you couldn’t even pay me to cross the street if I knew she was on the other side.”

      “Wow, you’re really seriously scared of her aren’t you?” said Tenan, stopping and turning me to face her. She looked in my eyes, her expression somewhere between amused and worried. “I’ve seen you stare down evil sorcerers and voodoo priests and all sorts of things that have more claws and teeth than I like to remember, but I’ve never seen you react like that. You’re not a ‘flee in terror’ sort of guy. You’re more like a ‘Okay it’s scary, let’s kick its butt anyway’ sort of guy. That’s what I like about you – well, that and those adorable abs, but that’s another conversation altogether.”

      “You’re such a lecher,” I said, laughing and pulling her in for a kiss – because that’s what you should do when faced with someone so beautiful who’s so obviously into you. One should always keep these things in perspective. When I pulled away so we could continue walking, she let out a soft sigh that was almost a moan of regret. “I’ll let you take advantage of me when we get back to the inn, as promised,” I told her, and that seemed to cheer her up immensely. “As for Cassandra, she’s a witch – literally, not metaphorically. She comes from a long line of witches too, going all the way back to the dark ages. They fled the witch burnings one step ahead of an angry mob and eventually settled here. They lived here long before Joseph Brooks ever claimed this land. They’re a large part of the reason that other supernatural creatures avoid this place. They’re also the reason mom picked this place to hide. They have a special knack for banishing and binding demons, you see. Cassandra’s grandmother taught my mother a lot and helped keep her safe until she knew enough to be able to protect herself. Cassandra’s grandmother actually likes me, believe it or not, but Cassandra has an unreasoning hatred of me. Her mother was killed by a demon in a binding gone wrong. So when Cassie sees me, it’s not the human half she sees. But I think what pisses her off the worst is that I have a human half in the first place, and, at the end of the day, I’m not a bad guy. If I was an evil bastard bent on death and destruction and world domination, she’d be able to snuff me without a worry. But I’m not so she’s got no choice but to put up with me.”

      “But there are lots of people who are able to bind your other half, and you’re not scared of them even a little bit,” put in Tenan, observant as always. “What makes _her_ special? Is it just because she hates you?”

      “No, because Abby hates me too, and also has the power to bind me, but the only thing that scares me about her is that my repair bills will go through the roof whenever she’s around,” I replied with a heavy sigh. “Cassie used to pull horrible tricks on me when we were growing up. Every time I saw her, she’d wait until my back was turned then do something awful. So now I have a sort of Pavlovian response to seeing her. Even now, I feel my shoulders twitching. But I’m grateful to her for something big, though. When I left town to go to my first foster home, I gave her a big chunk of the insurance money in exchange for her to keep Carla safe. I couldn’t protect my sister because I couldn’t even get near her. Cassie was my only hope. She’s the reason that I don’t worry about leaving Carla all alone here, because I know somebody’s watching out for her.”

      “Wait! Caleb!” called out Cassie breathlessly as she ran to catch up to us. On instinct I jumped back to hide behind Tenan. Sure, it might look cowardly, but Cassie had no reason to hate Tenan, only me. Then it sunk in through the Scotch haze that her tone when she’d called out to me hadn’t been the usual Cassie tone. Something was off about it, but I was too buzzed to put my finger on it that easily. “Look, I’m . . .  I’m . . .” She ducked her head, shuffling her shoe in the dirt and looking like she was either about to throw up or spontaneously combust – with Cassie, anything was possible. For safety’s sake, it was best to keep an open mind. “I’m s- . . .”

      “You’re what?” I asked, her hesitance only making me worry more. “You’re sullen, stinky, sultry, selling something, skating on thin ice, what? Wait . . . you’re not . . . no, that can’t possibly be it! Never in a thousand years! You can’t possibly be trying to apologize.” I tried to laugh it off, but Cassandra ducked her head lower, her shoulders hunching and her cheeks turning bright red. “You . . . _are_?” Now I was pretty sure I was going to be the one to spontaneously combust, or maybe even get struck by lightning twice in a row. “You’re kidding right?” I asked dryly. “You’ve got to be yanking my chain, because after everything you’ve ever done to me – no matter how painful it was, how many times you put me in the hospital, and no matter how little I deserved any of it – the word sorry has never been introduced as even a glimmer of a possibility. How much did I actually drink? Did somebody spike it? What the hell?”

      “Look, I’m sorry! All right? There I said it. _I’m sorry_ ,” she declared angrily, as if she was challenging me to a fight rather than trying to apologize for one. “Jeez, I’m trying to do the right thing here. You don’t have to be such a prick about it.”

      “That’s not what I meant and you know it,” I said, getting angry right back as I came out from behind my girlfriend. “I just know you better than to think you’re doing any such thing. You’ve hated me from the first moment you set eyes on me. It’s a universal truth. The sun will rise in the east. The moon will be full at least once a month. And Cassandra will always, _always_ hate my very existence. That’s just the way of the world. It can’t be changed. If you’re saying this is no longer true then the next thing you know, cats will be barking, pigs will be flying, and the stars will fall out of the sky. It’s _that_ level of weird, Cassie. Seriously.”

      She looked for a second like she was going to make one of her classic furious retorts, but then she let out a heavy sigh and looked away again. “I know,” said Cassie quietly. “But you forgot one of the most basic universal truths.”

      “And what’s that?” I asked faintly, entirely certain that this was a sign of the End Times.

      “People grow up,” she said simply, and with that one statement I entirely deflated. She did have a point. All things changed with time, and people were no exception to that rule. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about it since you left. After what happened to your family . . . my grandma and I talked about it a lot. You could have gone with him – your real father, I mean. If you had, you would have become immortal and been given access to limitless power. You could have trained with him and come back to this world as a king, taking anything your heart desired – money, fame, women, the whole evil enchilada. But . . . you didn’t. You spit in his face – literally, from what I could gather. You refused his offer and even banished him yourself, even though the banishing caused you physical damage. Now you live hand-to-mouth and help people who have nowhere else to go. You’re even more of a goody-two-shoes than me. I was born as one of the good guys, able to purify the world and banish evil, blah, blah, blah. Doing good comes easily to me. It’s not so easy for you. It’s a daily fight, but you never give up. You never let your father’s genes win. I might not like you much, but it’s only fair to acknowledge you as a comrade if not as a friend. So, can we call it a truce?”

      For the first time in my life, I honestly had no idea what to say. She offered me her hand, and I stared at it for a second, entirely dumbfounded. I think my mouth was even hanging open. Then Tenan nudged me and I slowly reached out and grasped her hand. She gave my hand a brief squeeze then let go and stepped back. “Well, that was embarrassing to nth power,” she said with a low whistle, and I chuckled, feeling my own cheeks heat in answer. “But anyway, I’ll see you around, Caleb.”

      “See you around Cassie,” I said and with that we went our separate ways. “Well, that was weird in the extreme. Not a bad thing, don’t get me wrong. Just . . . really _weird_.”

      The next morning found us both hung over – and suffering from sore muscles for reasons best not mentioned in polite company. At least, for once, I wasn’t the only one glaring hatefully into the bright morning sun. We went down to the local diner for coffee and a halfhearted attempt to eat breakfast after which we headed straight for PC. Not surprisingly, Debbie Hitler – ahem, _Hilter_ – didn’t exactly look any more pleased to greet the morning than we did. It’s a measure of how strange this trip had been thus far that I found myself empathizing with Debbie Hitler, the cheerleader Nazi. Debbie offered to refill our coffees from the pot in the office with a pained smile that saluted our miserable state. We accepted her peace offering gladly. Sipping at our freshened coffee, we sat in the lobby and waited for my sister’s doctor to call us into his office.

      We only waited for about ten minutes before Dr. Streiger appeared in the doorway just past the reception desk. He smiled in greeting to me as I got to my feet, and the two of us shook hands, meeting each other halfway. “I’m so glad you could make it out here,” he said, looking tired as ever, but pleased nonetheless. “I called you because I have what I hope will be wonderful news for you. Come into my office.”

      I gestured for Tenan to join me, and the pair of us followed Dr. Streiger back into the inner bowels of PC. Dr. Streiger was a short balding man with perpetual bags under his eyes and numerous signs of stress and premature aging. Doubtless being one of only two doctors running a back woods mental health facility was no picnic. It didn’t help that PC didn’t just serve Brooks Hollow. It served three other surrounding towns too. For all that all four towns were very small with extremely low population density, there were as surprising number of patients at PC. From what I’d been able to tell from my infrequent visits, most of the patients were just housewives suffering from nervous breakdowns, transferees who had moved from elsewhere and couldn’t hack country life, businessmen and -women who turned to drugs or alcohol out of boredom or stress and had taken a little too much of a liking to their poison-of-choice, and the occasional overflow from other counties. There were only a couple of the patients that were genuinely mentally ill. One of them was my poor traumatized sister, and the other was a guy who was convinced he was the reincarnation of Napoleon. He even spoke with an awful fake French accent – the man couldn’t speak a lick of French.

      The world beyond the always-locked main door was quiet as a tomb. The patients mostly stayed in their rooms except during designated times of day at which point they’d be freed to sit in the day room to watch TV or play in the rec room. They didn’t eat in a cafeteria. Their food was brought to their rooms, as was their medication. There may only be two doctors at PC, but there was an endless supply of nurses and basic laborers who could do things like deliver food trays, do the laundry, and clean the rooms. It was a sad fact of life in Brooks Hollow that there were usually more people than available jobs. With PC being so shorthanded on medical staff, it was only fair that they be allowed to take on enough unskilled laborers to make up for the lack.

      Dr. Streiger’s office was just a stereotypical therapist’s office with its vaguely uncomfortable faux–leather furniture, over-sized desk with a high-backed executive chair, and bookshelves loaded with psych manuals, medical texts, and self-help books. He gestured for me and Tenan to have a seat in the two chairs that faced his desk then took his own seat behind the desk. “I know you’ve traveled a really long way without knowing what’s going on, and I appreciate you making this trip with so little information to go on. But I actually called you here because there has been a change in your sister’s condition, and I thought it best to tell you in person. To begin with, she has recently made enormous improvements. She’s considerably more coherent and hasn’t had an episode in quite some time. After all this time, and with the help of an excellent surgeon, we’ve gotten her physical condition more or less stabilized as well. She’s still a long way from being able to go home, I’m afraid, but . . . I think she might be ready to try to see you again.”

      I was floored, to be frank. That was the last thing I’d expected when I’d gotten that call from the doc. In fact, I had been expecting some sort of bad news. Carla’s condition had been very delicate for a long time, and the volatility caused by her emotional trauma had made for more stress than her body could handle. To hear that, after four surgeries, she was finally on the mend was a miracle all on its own, but to also hear that her emotional scars were healing was more than I had ever thought possible. As far as meeting her went, I wasn’t going to get my hopes up. I’d give it a shot, if the doc thought it would work, but I wasn’t exactly optimistic. And yet . . . I couldn’t quite resist the faint glimmer of expectation. I wanted it to be true so badly. Carla was all the family I had left and I’d give anything to be able to see her again, to talk to her again. The years since the loss of my family had been long and lonely. The possibility, however thin, that I might be reunited with my last living sibling, made me wish I dared hope.

      Dr. Streiger led us back out into the corridor and further down to the rooms of the patients who needed to be watched more closely. There was a nurses’ station only a couple yards away and the staff break room was only a stone’s throw away as well. The doctor pulled a ring of keys from his belt and opened the room I knew to be Carla’s, instructing me to wait in the hall while he went in to talk to her. The wait was pure agony. Finally, he emerged and motioned for me to follow him into the room. I took it slow, entering the room one careful step at a time so that Carla had plenty of time to see me there before I reached her side. If this meeting was going to go sideways, I wanted to be as close to the door as possible when the excrement hit the rotating blades so I could high-tail it before bad got worse. I would do nothing that would further endanger Carla, and so far I’ve only been able to protect her by staying as far away as possible.

      “Hey, big brother, long time no see,” she said, her voice soft and her smile nervous – and slightly _off_. “Come here so I can get a good look at you.” I crept closer to the bed, still uncertain of my welcome despite her words. She looked so haggard, the scars of her ordeal dividing her once lovely face into pale sections and dark circles under eyes making her somehow look thinner. One of hers eyes was cloudy to the point that it was all but blind, her blond hair hanging in lank strings around her face. She had been slender before, but now she was rail-thin, as if there was nothing left to her but her bones and cartilage and an iron-hard determination to persevere. “You can come closer than that, John. I wouldn’t mind a hug. It’s been so long, and we’re all we have left.” That one phrase was all it took to finally propel me across the room and into her open arms. She felt so fragile in my arms, her whole body trembling like a wind-blown leaf. I wanted to hold her tightly, to prove just how much I loved her and how much I’d missed her, but I felt like any more pressure might shatter her to pieces. When she pulled back, she cupped my cheek in one hand and peered at me more closely. I held perfectly still, afraid to even breathe. “My beautiful big brother, it must have been so hard on you, all these years alone. But it’s going to be all right now. I promise. It’s going to be all right.”

      Without warning I felt something hot and needle-sharp pierce my chest, the pain of it so sudden that it took my breath away. I couldn’t even scream, but I definitely wanted to. “It must be torture to look in the mirror day after day and see his face looking back at you. I know it’s been hard, but now you won’t have to worry ever again,” said Carla, her smile warmer now. I drew back and looked down at my chest to see blood soaking my shirt in a spreading stain. That was when the doctor finally noticed what had happened and rushed over to us, Tenan only a step behind him. The two of them hustled me out as best they could while the doctor shouted for the nurses.

      “I’m all right,” I said weakly. “It’s not that bad. It’s just bleeding a lot.” They didn’t listen. Instead, I found myself surrounded by nurses, one of them cutting open the front of my shirt. As if the blood stain wasn’t enough ruin to contend with, they just had to go and make it totally unsalvageable. What they discovered seemed to baffle them. I had been right. It wasn’t as bad as it seemed. Something was sticking out my chest, but not the knife or other deadly weapon they’d expected. I couldn’t really see it properly until they pulled it out, at which point I nearly fainted just _thinking_ that something so long had just been embedded my chest. It was a needle as thick as a coffee stir and as long as a pencil. The head of the needle was flat and round and about the size of a dime. On it was what looked like a rune of some sort, but I couldn’t see it very well from the angle the nurse was holding the thing.

      “Julia, get her sedated,” ordered the doctor. “Robert, go get a wheelchair from the station so we can get him out of here. We need to get this bleeding stopped and make sure that needle didn’t pierce anything vital.”

      “I figure it’s safe to assume that since I can breathe, my lungs weren’t punctured,” I told them, still feeling uncharacteristically weak. “That’s something at least.”

      “That’s true, but that just means that no obvious damage has been done,” said Dr. Streiger grimly, and I could only sigh. They eased me up and into a wheelchair, one of the nurses holding multiple gauze pads over the tiny wound that was leaking a surprising amount of blood given its size. It hurt like hell too, but, despite the pain, it didn’t feel like anything was damaged. And I _really_ didn’t want them running any tests on me if I could avoid it. Medical tests tended to raise questions I wasn’t in the mood to answer.

      “Look, I’ve cut myself worse shaving,” I tried to tell them, though I was getting dizzier by the minute. Had I really lost that much blood? “I think the bleeding is already stopping, actually. Take a look for yourself.” And they did, and I was right – more or less. “Just slap a gauze pad or two on it, and I’ll have Tenan drive me down Brookside, just in case. All right?”

      The doctor gave me a deeply skeptical frown. “Are you sure that’s what you want to do?” he asked me. The nurses were already taping down fresh gauze pads, and one of them offered me a scrub shirt to replace the blood-soaked shirt they’d had to cut open. “I know you haven’t lived here in a while, so you may not remember, but Brookside is almost an hour away. Are you sure you’ll be all right driving all the way over there?”

      “I’ll be fine,” I assured him with as charming a smile as I could manage through the haze that was quickly shutting down my thought processes. I had to get to the car quick, before I passed out and lost all ability to protest. “Tenan, could you pull the car around, please? And I wouldn’t say no to hitching a ride out in this wheelchair, if somebody wouldn’t mind giving me a push. This isn’t the sort of thing one should deal with when hung over.” There were a few uneasy laughs at that from those who had enough experience with hang overs to sympathize.

      It was Dr. Streiger who opted to push the wheelchair, and as we walked he said in an unhappy tone, “I never thought in a million years that she’d do something like this. I don’t even know where she got that thing, to be blunt. I don’t want you to get the mistaken impression that we don’t monitor our patients, because we watch them very carefully. Carla, in particular, has to be watched 24/7 owing to her physical health and the severity of her trauma. I really just have no earthly idea how this happened, and I can’t apologize enough.”

      “It’s all right, Dr. Streiger,” I told him in a soothing, if bleary, voice. “I mean it. You know, there was this one client that accidentally stabbed me with a putty knife, if you can believe it. Nuts, right? So when I say I’ve had worse, I mean it. Not long after that, there was another case during which I scorched my hands so bad I couldn’t pick up anything heavier than a peanut for a month. This sort of thing is pretty much par for the course. I’m used to it. To be perfectly honest, after all the crazy shit I’ve seen, I get more worried when everything goes right.”

      “I can understand that,” said Dr. Streiger with a weary sort of chuckle. “While we’re being totally honest, I’ve always been a bit surprised that you didn’t end up in here at the same time your sister did. I still can’t fathom how you came out of all that in one piece, mentally at least.”

      “Yeah, well, I just hide my damage better than most,” I told the doc truthfully. “I still can’t eat meat, all these years later. I don’t sleep well except for on those rare occasions I can spare the time and money to go out for a few drinks. But most days, I stay too busy to pay it much mind. It’s when I stand still that it all comes crashing in on me.”

      “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, if you ever just need to talk to somebody, I’m willing to listen,” offered Dr. Streiger as he’d done many times before. It was kind of him to worry, and sometimes I almost wish I could take him up on it. “And, as for this injury, if there’s anything we can do, just say the word. I know money’s tight, and keeping Carla here isn’t cheap. I feel like this is more our fault than anyone’s, so if you need help paying for your care at Brookside, just let me know and I’ll make sure it’s all taken care of. And, John, I’m sorry to have gotten your hopes up. I really thought we were making progress, or I wouldn’t have called you all the way here.”

      “If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think she really meant to hurt me,” I said, my thoughts getting harder to hold onto. “I’m pretty sure she thought she was doing me a favor. What favor that could be . . . hell if I know, but it’s better than it was, at least. Sure she stabbed me, but she hugged me first and she said my name without screaming and, damn it, she smiled at me for the first time in years. I’ll take what I can get.”

      Debbie buzzed us through the main door then came around the desk in a rush when she saw me in the wheelchair, her face a study in concern. “Are you all right? What happened?” she asked.

      “Yeah, it’s no big,” I told her with a languid wave of my hand. “Apparently, Carla was feeling a little stabby today is all. But I’ll be fine.” Debbie hurried forward and propped open the front doors so Dr. Streiger could push me out into the piercing rays of the midmorning sun. I hastily shoved my sunglasses onto my face then accepted Tenan’s help to get to my feet. Between the two of us, we managed to make it look like I was much steadier than I felt, and we got me loaded into the passenger seat. With a final wave for Debbie and Dr. Streiger, we drove off.

      “So, tell me the truth, are you really all right?” asked Tenan, and I could hear in her voice that she was trying very hard to keep it together.

      “Just head for Meredith’s shop,” I told her grimly. “Something’s wrong. I can’t smell the blood. I’m covered in it, but I can’t smell it at all. Normally, the smell of all that blood, even if it’s mine, would be pushing my control to its limits. And speaking of smells, I can’t smell much of _anything_. On top of that, the sun is bright, sure, but it doesn’t burn my eyes like it usually does. Every noise, even my own voice, sounds far away. I feel like my head is wrapped in a blanket. Hearing, smell, sight, all of it’s . . . just wrong. I need Aunt Merry. Now.” I leaned back in the car seat, throwing an arm over my face and trying very hard not to think. That muffled feeling was making me extremely uncomfortable – and more than a little scared. I relied on my overblown senses to keep me safe, and without them I felt cut off from the world altogether and vulnerable because of it. I needed Merry to figure out what was wrong and how to fix it because I couldn’t get my mind working well enough to solve it on my own. I just hoped she _would_ help. She often took a “figure it out for yourself” stance that could be truly infuriating. If she felt as if helping me might alter my course in some way, she’d leave me swinging without a second thought.

      When we got to the shop, Tenan parked and ran into the shop without me. I didn’t really mind since I wasn’t feeling especially like getting up anyway. When she came out it was at a dead run with Meredith right behind her. Merry all but threw open the car door, telling Tenan, “Help me get him inside.” I groaned, not happy at the prospect of moving, but with the two of them tugging and pulling with all their might, how could I not help.

      Once inside the shop – where, for once, I didn’t sneeze upon entering, for which I was _very_ grateful – they helped me stumble into the back room where they laid me out on the creaky old cot that had been back there for as long as I can remember. They got me out of my jacket and the ill-fitting scrub shirt, and Meredith carefully peeled away the gauze. The puncture wasn’t large but the area around it was a frightening shade of reddish purple with weird black flecks. Merry looked at it more closely, touching it delicately with one finger as her frown deepened. “This is a binding,” she said at last. “And a very strong one at that. You said he was stabbed by a really long needle right? And there was something on the head of it? I think that needle was the medium. I don’t know who could have gotten to Carla to give her something like that, but it would have to be somebody who would also be persuasive enough to talk her into this.”

      “All right, so it’s a binding,” I said, getting a little bit tired of being caught and bound by every third rate power-hungry idiot with entitlement issues. “So what does _this_ binding do exactly?”  
      “This isn’t a binding in the way you’re thinking,” said Merry, pulling up a chair and sitting down heavily. “This doesn’t bind you to somebody’s will. This just binds you – period. It’s wrapped around the blood you inherited from your father and all the powers and privileges that come with it. This is probably as close to being a normal human as you’re ever likely to get.”

      I didn’t really know what to think about that, let alone how to react. Growing up had been rough for me, with my half-demon blood making me vastly different than other more normal children. I got bullied a lot until the other kids discovered my temper. Then they were too scared to bully me, but the isolation that followed was a form of bullying all its own. There was also that pesky sun allergy to contend with, not to mention the heightened senses. I can’t begin to describe how much fun it is having a strong sense of smell while sitting in a room laden with the pungent aroma of adolescents. BO is not a friend of the sensitive nose, heavy deodorants and perfumes even less so. Back then, I would have given anything to be like everybody else – to be a normal human. But then I grew up and realized that my differences were assets more than problems. This was especially brought home to me by the years of having to protect and hide myself from my father who was _still_ searching for me, even after all the time that’s passed since I banished him.

      And that was it. That was the key. “I’m not human,” I told Meredith, my tongue beginning to feel as heavy as my eyelids. I took off my sunglasses and opened my eyes. “I don’t look human, do I?”

      Meredith drew in a sharp breath and leaned back. “No darling, you really don’t. If anything you look _less_ human than you did before,” she told me and I nodded very carefully, not wanting my head to fall off – it certainly felt like it might.

      “That’s the trick,” I said, every word a Herculean effort. “No power. No defenses. No masks. What does that tell you? If he tries to look for me now, he’ll find me. I can’t hide. I can’t send him home. Call Cassie. Do it now.”

      “I’ll call her, but I’m not sure if she’ll be willing to help,” said Aunt Merry.

      “Tenan, could you hand me my hoodie?” I begged pitifully. I could taste blood where my teeth had cut the inside of my lips. I wanted to burrow under a blanket and hide before anyone could see me like this, but I’d have to settle for hiding under my hoody for now. She helped me sit up and slide on the hoodie, zipping it up for me and pulling up the hood over my head before taking over Meredith’s abandoned chair. “I wish you didn’t have to see this again. I hate being seen like this. Hell, I hate _being_ like this.”

      “I know dear, but it’s all right,” she told me, laying a hand on my cheek. It felt delightfully cold to my fevered skin. “You’re not going to scare me off no matter how hard you try. And if you’re worried about the danger, don’t even bother. I made sure to bring a sidearm from my own personal collection. I’ll keep watch until you’re back on your feet. Besides, if I let you get killed, I doubt I’m going to find anybody else with your bedroom skills.”

      “You’re such a lecher,” I sighed, just barely resisting the urge to smile.

      Cassandra showed up a lot sooner than expected, and she wasn’t too pleased about my appearance. However, she was also surprisingly compassionate. I really hadn’t expected that at all. She winced when saw the spreading purple mark on my chest that was quickly becoming mostly black, as if the flesh was rotting – which was not an analogy I wanted to think about too hard. Cassie laid it out for us, blunt but oddly sympathetic. The good news was that the binding could be broken. The bad news was that the result I feared most was already approaching. Though I wasn’t able to sense it in my current state, she could. “Breaking this binding isn’t going to be easy, and we’re going to have to work fast. That means cutting corners, and you know how dangerous that can be,” said Cassie as she replaced the hood to cover my face – mostly so she wouldn’t have to look at it. And far be it for me to throw stones. I didn’t want to see my face right then either. “You’re going to have to walk the Old Road and reclaim your power. It’s going to be painful, given some of the things you’ve experienced, but it’s really the only way. Are you willing?”

      “Do I have a choice?” I asked flatly.

      “No, not really,” replied Cassandra with a shrug, and I could only sigh. “But you really shouldn’t go alone. You’re too weak right now, and this could get really dangerous if you’re old man catches up with you while you’re still walking your path. I’ll have to go with you, since you can’t be the guide on your own path, even if you still had your power, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea to bring somebody along to defend us.”

      “How about a badass chick with mad martial arts skill and a really big gun?” I asked, cutting my eyes toward Tenan, a crooked smile curling one corner of my mouth.

      “No wonder you were hiding behind her last night,” commented Cassie, looking at Tenan through narrowed eyes as if reassessing her. “But she’s a normal human right? That means that if she doesn’t really _want_ to tag along, she won’t even be able to see the Old Road, let alone walk on it.” Tenan bristled as if offended at the suggestion that she’d be anything but gung ho. Credit where it’s due, Tenan had yet to shrink away from a challenge, supernatural or otherwise. There was a reason I liked having her around – aside from her gorgeous body and lecherous ways.

      “Like I’d let him go off somewhere without me when he looks like week-old death,” snorted Tenan. “I’ve been watching his back for a while. I don’t see any reason to stop now or anytime soon.”

      “I’m pretty sure that’s not my _back_ you’ve been watching,” I said with weary humor, and Tenan gave me that leering smile of hers and a broad wink.

      “Get a room,” sighed Cassandra.

      “We’ve got one, but there’re spectators in it,” I said, and Cassie just rolled her eyes at me, not bothering to comment or complain. She knew as well as I did that it was always a good idea to be in high spirits when starting out on the Old Road. Walking the Old Road was extremely dangerous and a lot could go wrong, but nothing made the whole thing go pear-shaped quite as fast as going in with a gut full of fear.

      The Old Road wasn’t really a road, you see. Actually, it wasn’t any sort of real _place_ at all. It’s a path that’s just to the left of the reality that we currently inhabit. When you’re on the Old Road, all the concepts that are the guideposts of reality become flexible, malleable, entirely subject to the people walking it. While there, getting lost and spending the rest of eternity wandering was not outside the realm of possibilities. However, despite the danger, the Old Road is enormously useful. It allows you to view past or future events, see into or even visit other realms such as demonic realms and fae realms, and even reclaim invaluable things that you’ve lost – which is what we intended to use it for. But, as with all things that seem too good to be true, there’s a catch – a few of them, actually. First of all, you can’t get to the Old Road from just anywhere. You need to enter and exit from a place where the walls that separate the realms are weak, such as a place where a breach has occurred in the past or that was weak due to a large amount of raw power being used repeatedly in the vicinity. Secondly, you really need to have a guide, somebody with the power to anchor you to your proper place. Without that anchor . . . please revisit the admonition about getting lost and wandering for eternity. It was possible to do make the trip on your own, but the risks increased exponentially. In general, the person making use of the Old Road was going to be more than a little distracted, since it took all of a person’s concentration to remain focused on the original intention of walking the Road. We call this intention the “path” to lend it much-needed definition. The path is, in short, the sum of intent, will, and focus. How all of this came about – the Old Road and the rules for walking it – nobody knows. And as long as it works, who cares?

      “All right, here’s the part you’re really going to hate,” said Cassie, visibly steeling herself for what she had to say next. “There’s only one place anywhere near here where we can find a significant enough breach to let us access the Old Road. I think you know where I’m talking about. Don’t you?”

      I closed my eyes, really wishing I didn’t know, but unable to deny it. We got me loaded back in the car with no little difficulty and while we drove, Cassie and I explained the Old Road to Tenan as best we could.  She didn’t understand all of it, but she got the important bits. We drove to the outer edge of town, pulling off onto a gravel road just before we reached the highway. There were only three houses along the gravel road, two on the right and one on the left. The one on the left had been uninhabited for many years, and it really showed. The picket fence was a consistent mud brown rather than white. The carefully cultivated garden out front had become overrun with weeds, tall grass, and wildflowers. The grass had converged on the driveway, as if to prevent anybody from getting too close. The house itself, which had once been painted pale yellow was now mud-brown with curling bits of tenaciously clinging yellow and darker patches of black where mold had gotten into the wood. Abandoned wasp nests and spider webs hung from the scalloped eaves, and the stained glass front door was covered by a piece of rotting plywood and the leftover yellow and black streamers of crime scene tape.

      “Home, sweet home,” I whispered as the car stopped. Just seeing the current state of my childhood home, which my mom and stepdad had taken such pride in, formed a cold lump of grief in the pit of my stomach. “I’m starting to think this was a bad idea.”

      “Give yourself more credit. You can handle this,” said Cassie, but I could tell that she already knew her pep talk was lame and not terribly effective in the face of what we were setting out to do. “Really, I’m mostly just worried about whether we can get in or not. I thought maybe we could make our way in through one of the windows, but they’ve got them all boarded up.”

      “Actually, I still have the key,” I said, with a hopeless sigh. “We can go in through the kitchen door in the carport. That’s where the breech was anyway, in the kitchen. Let’s get this over with.”

      The lock was a bit rusty, but a little extra force convinced it to give up the ghost. Walking into that kitchen, seeing the dilapidated state of it, felt like a slap in the face. My mother had spent countless hours in that kitchen. It had been her private domain and none of us had dared enter it lightly. Seeing it full of animal droppings, dirt, and less recognizable substances nearly brought tears to my eyes. If ever anything could bring home the fact that my mother was long gone, it was the state of that once-bright place. It also looked like, though the bodies had long ago been removed, the blood stains had been left behind. To anybody else, it wouldn’t be obvious what those stains were, since the blood had been there long enough for it to entirely decay, but I knew. I remembered every single spilled drop and where it had fallen, the image having been engraved sharply and indelibly in my mind.

      I crouched in front of the largest stain next to the ruins of the demolished kitchen table, reaching out one shaking hand to almost touch it. It was the spot where my mother had lost her life, her guts spilled on the floor in a putrid heap as she screamed and screamed until her last breath. Shaking my head to clear it of that mental image, I closed my eyes and clenched my fists. Straightening, I turned to Cassie. “The breech was in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room,” I told her, my voice sounding somehow hollow to my ears. Tenan came up from behind me and laid a gentle hand on my shoulder, offering whatever comfort her presence could provide, and I accepted that comfort gratefully.

      Cassie’s eyes seemed focused on the moldering remains of the birthday cake that had been in the middle of the table when it had met its demise. When I lightly touched her shoulder to get her attention, she started then let out a heavy sigh. “All right, let’s get this going,” she said, her tone resigned. “You two, stand behind me as close as possible and close your eyes. Don’t open them until I say so.”

      There was really nothing we could do but follow instructions, so we moved in closer to Cassie who was standing in the kitchen doorway. As soon as we were close enough, we closed our eyes and waited. When Cassie gave the go ahead to open our eyes, we were no longer standing in the bleak remains of the kitchen of my childhood home. We stood in a hospital room. Lying in the bed, pale and shaking with fatigue, was my mother. She held in her arms a wrinkled, red-faced infant with a light dusting of black hair on a head made misshapen by the rigors of birth. My mother was stroking that black hair and weeping. I stepped closer to the bed. I wasn’t worried about being seen or heard. Cassie, Tenan, and I were only visitors to that frame of time and so could not affect anyone or anything other than each other. The Old Road was always unpredictable, but this much, at least, we had known would happen. It was the key to reclaiming my power and stepping out from underneath the binding. We were going to have to take a stroll down memory lane – _my_ memory lane.

      I leaned closer to the baby and Tenan made a small sound as if she would protest. “She can’t see me,” I told her. “In a manner of speaking anyway.” Truth be told, at that moment my mother only had eyes for me – the infant me laying in her arms, that is. My stepdad walked into the room and moved to stand at my mother’s bedside. He looked down at the baby, smiling his warm smile with a hint of moisture in the corners of his eyes.

      “What are we going to call him, Diane?” he asked my mother softly. “I was thinking Jonathan, after your father, and maybe Caleb after my father. They’d like that.”

      “You’d still name him after your father, knowing he’s not yours?” she asked him, turning her tear-stained face to him with a look of surprise.

      “I don’t care who his biological father is. I intend to be this boy’s father in every way that counts,” explained my stepdad, laying a gentle hand on her tangled hair.

      “Then Jonathan Caleb it is,” she said, smiling at last.

      “Then that must be....” began Tenan, pointing toward the couple and their new baby.

      “Yes, Tenan, that’s Diane and Thomas McCabe, my parents. And that frog-faced baby is me,” I told her, my voice hushed, almost reverent. The last time I had seen my mother and stepdad they had been barely recognizable as human let alone as my parents. Seeing them again, young and happy and full of love for the son that should never have existed, was heartrending. I could have stood there for hours, just drinking in the sight of them and listening to them plan for my future, but it was not meant to be.

      “Memories like this won’t bring you back,” said Cassie with unexpected sympathy in her voice. “We should move on.”

      I hated it, but I knew she was right. Losing your focus on the Old Road was dangerous, so I needed to stay on point or we’d all be lost. We were there for a reason. I didn’t dare lose sight of that reason. Clutching tight to my resolve, I concentrated on all the times that had marked me as different, as something other than human. The world around us began to blur and shift until it seemed to be speeding past us. When it stopped, we were standing in a church. Not just any church either, it was the church my family had been going to since my great-great grandfather’s time. We were standing on the dais just behind the priest. My parents stood to one side, dressed in their best. My godfather, Joe Savelli, stood with them. It was my baptism, of all the awful days. Tenan shifted so that she could see the baby that the priest held securely in one arm, the old man’s gnarled hand cradling the baby’s head. The baby was screaming blue murder, but that wasn’t anything new. A lot of babies cried at their baptisms. Unlike those other babies, however, I had a pretty good reason to wail. The priest would just have to find it out the hard way.

      The appropriate words and blessings were spoken, the baby’s screams growing louder with every word. Then the priest dipped his hand in the holy water and sprinkled the distressed infant liberally. Instantly, steam began to rise from the points where the blessed liquid had touched the child’s skin. The priest looked startled at first then genuinely dismayed. He began speaking a different blessing and tried to trace the sign of the cross on the baby’s forehead. The baby was having none of it. The tears stopped and the infant’s eyes opened. I know what the priest saw. I didn’t have to look. I saw it in the mirror often enough to be all too familiar with the burning embers in the centers of the perfectly black eyes. My godfather leapt forward, just barely catching my infant self as the priest stumbled back with a terrified expression.

      “I guess this is where they first started to suspect something was different about you,” said Tenan, with a pitying look for the baby that was suffering from the burns left by the holy water.

      “Yeah, this was the first hint,” I said with a soft sigh. “It got more obvious later.”

      The scene shifted again, and this time I was five years old, and I was returning to church for the first time since I was a baby. “You were so adorable,” cooed Tenan, going instantly girly in the face of chubby cheeks on an overdressed toddler. “Look at you in your little suit.”

      “I have to admit,” said Cassie with a smirk, “You do look rather cute in a bow tie. Maybe I should get you one for your birthday.”

      That was when it all went wrong. We got as far as the double doors, my stepdad holding my hand and my mother holding my infant half-sister Carla. We were there for her baptism. As soon as little Caleb – or rather John, as I was called at the time – got to the threshold, he stopped dead in his tracks. He stared into the church, wide-eyed and frightened. The parental hand that held him tried to drag him forward, but John wanted nothing to do with it.

      “What’s wrong John?” asked my stepdad gently.

      “It hates me,” whispered the child. “It’s going to burn me, I can tell.”

      “Now, John, there’s nothing to be afraid of,” soothed my stepdad. “It’s just a building. It’s a place where people go to celebrate things. Don’t you want to go someplace like that?”

      John gave him a look weighted with more sarcastic disbelief than should have been possible for a five year old. “If you say so.”

      My younger self took a cautious step into the church then another. Not three feet from the door and the kid began shrieking. His skin turned bright red, his eyes bugged out, and sweat poured down his face. My stepdad swept the boy up in his arms and hustled him outside, cradling him as gently as though he was still a baby until the sobbing subsided. “I don’t have a problem with all churches, or even all holy symbols,” I told Tenan with a shrug. “It’s all a question of faith. Some places are just more hallowed than others. This is one of those places.”

      I had a feeling I knew which memory was coming next, and as predicted the next scene was in the bedroom of a little boy, decorated with all the things little boys treasure – baseball posters and pennants, a model airplane that hung from the ceiling by fishing line, lovingly arranged if somewhat abused action figures on a shelf, etc. My mother sat on the twin-sized bed next to my ten-year-old self, one arm around his shoulders. His face was in his hands and his small body shook with uncontrollable sobs. I remember the incident that had sent me home crying, the moment clear in my mind as if it had happened only yesterday. It was just another episode where I was persecuted for the things that made me different, but after so many of such incidents my poor little heart was all but broken.

      “Hush, John, it’s all right,” my mother murmured soothingly. “You know better than to listen to what those children say. They only say those things because they’re ignorant and have no manners.”

      “But they’re right!” young John wailed inconsolably. “I’m weird! Why, mama? What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I just be like everybody else?”

      “Oh, my poor love,” whispered my mother sadly. “I suppose you’re old enough now that I can tell you this. But you have to swear to me you won’t tell anybody else, not even your sisters. Will you do that? Will you give me your most serious oath that you won’t tell anybody what I’m going to tell you now?” As it turned out, the most solemn oath I had believed in as a child was a pinky swear. Pinky swearing was sacred to children at that age and something promised with a pinky swear was inviolate. “If you break your promise then bad things will happen to you, and me and Thomas and your sisters too. Do you understand?” Young John nodded gravely. “Remember I told you that Thomas is your daddy now because your real daddy was a bad man and that Thomas loves you more than your real daddy?” Another sober nod. “Well, the truth is, your real daddy wasn’t really a man at all. He wasn’t human.”

      “What do you mean?” asked John, mystified and a little frightened. There was nothing that could terrify a child faster than the sight of a parent showing fear. Mom was definitely afraid. Her hands shook where they rested on young John’s shoulders, and her gaze was distant like she was remembering something unhappy. I remember too that I had even smelled the fear on her, though at the time I hadn’t known that that’s what I was smelling. I had only known on an instinctive level that it meant something really bad.

      “Remember in the bible when it talks about demons? Well, demons can sometimes look like people and it’s hard to tell them apart from real people. Your daddy did something bad to me, but something good came out of it – _you_ , my love. Until he did that bad thing, I thought he was a person, but then he showed me what he really was. He was a demon, just like in the bible.” My mother paused, biting her lip as she watched young John for a reaction. The child just sat, staring with wide, disbelieving eyes at his mother. She could have grown a second head and he would have been less shocked. “Because your father was a demon and I’m a person, half of you is human, like me sweetie, but half of you is a demon, like your real father. That’s why the sunlight hurts you, why you can’t go to church or touch any of the holy things. It’s why you look different and feel different. Do you understand?”

      I turned away. I couldn’t bear to watch the tantrum that followed. I didn’t need to watch as a little boy learned the meaning of despair, as he discovered that however much he might wish to be like everybody else, he never would be. He would always be alone, him against the world, because the world was normal and he never would be. I didn’t need to witness the destruction of his room as anguish-fueled rage overwhelmed a child too young for self-control. I’ve seen it before, so there was no need to relive it.

      The new scene that began was even more damning than the last one. This particular incident became the reason that many of the townspeople are still leery of me. I was in junior high. The incident started with the usual taunting, a circle of kids spouting cruelty from all sides and laughing. I was trying so hard not to get into fights. My mother had begged me to be cautious and hold my temper because I was stronger than the other children and could really hurt them if I wasn’t careful. She hadn’t wanted me to become a bully. But by wishing for me to avoid being a bully, she’d inadvertently told me to give _carte du blanche_ to the kids actually doing the bullying, and those little bastards had grown bolder by the day, knowing I wouldn’t do anything to stop it. Then somebody in this particular circle got the bright idea to throw a rock at me. Next thing I knew, a cascade of rocks was pummeling me from every direction at once. Needless to say it was a traumatizing experience – so traumatizing, in fact, that my mask cracked. A little of the real me showed through, and the real me was really pissed. By the end of the fight there were a lot of kids injured, and some of them were never the same again. My mom insisted that it wasn’t my fault. I was never quite convinced that she was right about that. I always thought that if I had tried a little harder, I could have avoided the situation altogether.

      After that, there were many similar episodes – way too many, in my opinion – each ending in violence and followed by angry phone calls from parents and my own personal recipe of self-loathing, self-recrimination, and self-doubt. In those early days, I had wanted so badly to fit in, but I guess all children do. I hadn’t been mature enough yet to understand why I was so widely hated, why so many backs were turned to me. I couldn’t make sense of the whispers and rumors flying all around me, or the reason why my mother and stepdad would come home angry every time they went out with me in public. I had felt so cornered, and like any cornered animal, I had lashed out at those trying to attack me. I was a kid. I didn’t know any better. Eventually, mom and Aunt Merry more or less solved my little temper tantrum problem, for which I’m still grateful to this day. Unfortunately, their solution was to hypnotize me into a rather fierce love of gummy bears and implanting the message that the jewel-toned tasty treats would make me mellower. It worked like a charm, but is fairly embarrassing – so, still grateful, but also disgruntled.

      And really, the violence and rage weren’t the only things in my life back then. Among the fights and tantrums were also scenes showing my training with mom and Meredith, Cassie’s grandma and Shiro’s master. I had even spent some time training with Rodney and Richard’s parents who had been very powerful sorcerers with some pretty fascinating old school methods. I had eagerly learned from anybody willing to teach me, trying desperately to get a handle on my inner monster before I wound up doing something permanent and unforgiveable to somebody. Besides, I may hate doing research, but I actually really enjoy learning. I guess I have an inner scholar living side-by-side with my inner monster.

      And all these little Hallmark moments weren’t just re-opening old wounds or rehashing the best and worst of my childhood trauma, they were acting like instructions that told the universe how I was supposed to be assembled. Each episode added another facet to the definition of myself as a person – the student, the son, the brother, the friend, the athlete, and, in my more altruistic moments, the defender of justice – and also the definition of myself as a half-demon – the medium, the monster, the superhero, the . . . Hang on a minute! Since when did I have _that_ power?!

      My younger self was sitting at our kitchen table across from Aunt Merry. I remembered that it was the first and last time she’d ever read my cards. She’d never told me what she’d seen, but afterwards she had taught me the art of divination. I didn’t _remember_ anything else happening aside from her turning the cards over, one by one. After they’d all been turned over, she’d given me a look that, to this day, is still as sharp in my mind as the edge of a killing blade. She hadn’t just been unnerved, she’d been truly _terrified_. I had never seen Aunt Merry flinch before, or since, so seeing her so afraid had made a big impression on me. Now, I guess I could understand the reason she’d been so frightened.

      After the final card was flipped over, usually Meredith would pronounce what she could see of the future, using the cards and their definitions to make explaining her visions easier. She called the cards her crutch. This time, it wasn’t Meredith that made the pronouncement. The part that I had forgotten happened the second after the last card landed on the table. The younger me looked down at the cards with a small shiver then looked up at Meredith, his eyes filling with black, that darkness spreading like spilled ink across the whites of his eyes. The deep red pits in the centers of his black eyes flared to life then abruptly changed from red to white. “Blood will wash these walls,” younger John told her in a soft, eerie voice. “When the true monster comes, those standing closest will quickly fall. He created for himself a perfect vessel of his will, and he waits while it matures and gains in strength. When the time is right, he’ll come to claim his prize. If he succeeds and gains a foothold in this realm, no one will be able to stand against him. A demon in a human host can be exorcised and banished. A demon in a demi-human host cannot be exorcised except by the hand of the divine. Seek the host of the will of the divine and learn his ways to prevent the ruin of this world.”

      The light in my eyes went out after that and the scene became just as I remembered it, with Aunt Merry looking at me as if I had just sprouted horns and a second head. Not long after that, Simon had been brought to live in our little town and we’d become fast friends. Now I could understand why my mother and Meredith had been so insistent that Simon and I spend time together and train together. They had been trying to outsmart a genuine gloom-and-doom prophecy. In fact, a lot of things that had seemed really odd at the time suddenly made a whole lot of sense, including the sudden need to spend my weekends learning from Cassie’s grandmother. Before that, I had only been able to learn a few small tricks from her whenever my mother had gone to visit Cassie’s family. After that tarot reading, however, I had started learning more serious banishing spells and exorcism techniques along with the names of all the most powerful demons and many of the weaker ones too. She had even taught me how to summon strong spirits and imps and bind them to my will. I didn’t like doing it, but I knew how thanks to that marvelous, malicious old woman. Really, I adored her – I still do.

      “That explains so much,” said Cassie, apparently thinking the same thing as me. “I had always wondered why gran was suddenly so insistent on teaching you so much. Normally, my family’s spells are kept in the family. But then one day, gran decided to teach them to an outsider, and nobody lifted a finger to stop her. On top of that, you’re a half-demon. No offense, but that sort of makes you our natural enemy, so it made even less sense for her to be teaching you. But now I get it. She was trying to stop your father – your _real_ father – from taking over the vessel he’d created. She was teaching you self-defense, because you had already predicted that nobody else standing close to you would be able to defend you. She knew that the only hope was if you stood up for yourself. Why didn’t you say anything? I would have understood if you’d explained.”

      “I didn’t know,” I told her, just as blown away. “I didn’t remember a single word of that prophecy. I had no idea, and neither mom nor Merry told me anything about it either. When we get done with all this, Merry is going to have some serious explaining to do.”

      “And so is gran,” said Cassie with the same determination. “All right, are you ready for this next part? We both know we’re getting very close to _that_ memory. Are you going to be able face it and keep your focus?”

      Tenan suddenly put her hand in mine and squeezed it, not needing to be told what memory Cassie referred to. It was pretty easy to guess, and it would be just as easy to guess that I would need some serious moral support to get through it. I couldn’t afford to lose focus so close to the end zone. Not only would I lose this chance to break free of Carla’s binding, I would also endanger Tenan. Cassie might be able to still make it back on her own, but Tenan only had me and Cassie to keep her safe and keep her anchored to herself. If one of us gave up the ghost, Tenan would never leave the Old Road alive. With that thought primary in my mind, I hardened my resolve and nodded to Cassie.

      “I can do it,” I told her firmly. “And if it gets to be too much, I have enough power back by now that I might be able to fast forward through the scene . . . I think.”

      “You should conserve your power if at all possible,” said Cassie. “You may need it later.”

      “You have a point,” I said with a slight nod.

      The next scene was a little more amusing. It was the day I’d gotten scouted for the football team. I was with my gym class running around the track, and the local jocks and bullies were all gathered in the middle of the football field trying out for the team. One of the jocks had said something exceptionally rude to me, and since I was already having a rotten day I’d snapped. I’d crossed the distance between us, dodging everyone that tried to stop me, and rolled over the jerk like a freight train. He was twice my size and wearing football pads, so he wasn’t the only one that was shocked I had taken him down. The football coach was in love from that moment on. Nothing would do but that I joined the team. Mom hadn’t been thrilled by the idea, but the coach wouldn’t leave us alone until she consented. It was the first time my bad temper had led to a genuinely useful end.

      A lot of the scenes after that were of football games, since more often than not I was using better than human reflexes and strength to knock down guys two and three times my size. Then the fateful day rolled around. I’d had a bad feeling earlier that day, but I’d dismissed it as silly and went on about my day. I had been really looking forward to my birthday since we’d made plans to go to a fancy restaurant two towns over. We’d even made reservations so we could be sure to get a table big enough to fit all of us. Then I got home and all thoughts of celebration were blasted away in an instant.

      As the scene played out before us, I could tell that Tenan and Cassie were all but holding their breath, waiting for the younger me to open the kitchen door. When it finally happened, I heard Cassie let out a little sound of dismay while Tenan wrapped my hand in both of hers as if to offer comfort. But, really, there wasn’t enough comfort in the world to cushion me from the scene before me. Once again, I stood among the carnage, helpless to stop what was happening. My stepdad was on the ground, propped up against the wall, gutted and yet clutching the decapitated body of my baby brother. Two of my three half-sisters were entirely dismembered, their limbs stacked like firewood. Carla was covered in opened wounds from head to toe and lay bleeding on the floor, thankfully unconscious from the pain.

      “Welcome home,” said my father in that velvet smooth voice. My younger self froze and my older self shuddered hard. I could have gone the rest of my life without hearing that voice again, so deceptively charming and pleasant, and I had fought long and hard so I never would hear it again. And yet, here I was, hearing it again, seeing that face again. Back then, I had still looked somewhat like my mother, but now I realized just how much like _him_ I had become since then _._ I really did look entirely too much like him now, but he had none of the little flaws that made me look somewhat human. He had the sort of looks that defied paltry labels like gender or nationality, beautiful rather than handsome and entirely captivating. He was _too_ perfect, all except for those eyes – black eyes with a glowing red center like burning coals. He smiled at my stupefied younger self in a parody of human warmth that sent chills down the spine.

      “I’ve been waiting quite a while to meet you. Come inside and let me have a look at you.” The younger me didn’t move, too frozen with shock and terror to even twitch. “Now, is that any way to greet your father?”

      “M-my what?” my younger self stammered, not wanting to believe what he’d heard. Even my older self still felt a little sick hearing those words, and I’d had some time to get used to the idea.

      “Your mother did a good job hiding you all this time, but humans tend to let their guard down when enough time passes in peace,” he said, pulling my mother, who he was still clutching by her throat, close to him. She shuddered all over, the movement causing flecks of blood to drip on the floor, joining the growing pool of it beneath her. “She is a victim of her own success, I’m afraid. Complacency is often the downfall of the weak-minded. Though, really, I think her true mistake was taking you from me in the first place. If she had just stayed put so I could claim you at your birth, we wouldn’t be having this little tiff now.” With that he raked his talon-tipped fingers across her stomach from behind then dragged those claws up to her chest. He turned her so she was facing him and plunged his hand deep into her chest. She screamed raggedly, her voice all but gone from the screaming she’d done already. My younger self screamed with her, finally rushing forward only to be knocked back by the gore-soaked hand that held my mother’s heart. My father dropped my mother to the floor and dropped her heart right on top of her, as carelessly as a child who was discarding one toy for a more interesting one he’d just discovered. Seeing it all over again made the breath catch in my throat, and I lifted an involuntary hand to the scars on my chest left behind by his sharp, sharp talons. My father bent down and grabbed my younger self by the front his shirt, those razor-sharp talons scoring the skin underneath. My father lifted my younger self high so that his feet dangled, and John clawed at his arm futilely, but his claws were feeble compared to my father’s and the demon hardly seemed to notice them. “It’s time for us to go, son. We have so much to do, you and I.”

      That was when the red light burst into new life in my younger self’s eyes, fear being shoved aside by wave upon wave of a rage that burned like the fire at the beginning of the world. The words of banishing that I’d used then were holy words, and they’d boiled in my throat nearly as hot as my rage. My father was amused at first but then his eyes became wide with alarm. His corporeal form destabilized, and younger John was soon lying on the floor where he’d fallen, my father’s hand no longer solid enough to grip him. It was a hard landing but John kept shouting that spell at him with everything he’d had in him, fighting through the agony it caused him in the hopes that it would heap the same agony on his opponent. At the end of the spell my father finally vanished completely with a scream of pain and thwarted fury.

      Even just hearing that spell was painful for me, and the older me shook hard, hugging myself tightly until it was over. Tenan put an arm around my shoulders and Cassie turned back to check on me. “I’m all right,” I told them softly.

      “Well done,” said a voice that we shouldn’t have been able to hear anymore, and suddenly he was there, standing among the fallen bodies of my family all over again, just like he had stood all those years ago. He hadn’t changed even a little bit since the last time I’d seen him. But, luckily, I had changed. I swiftly swept Cassie aside so that she and Tenan stood behind me, and I heard Tenan pull her gun and cock it. “To have routed me so thoroughly, you’re certainly a worthy successor to my power. So cruel. So full of wrath and fire. Welcome home, son.”

      Between one second and the next he was already behind me, knocking Tenan down before she could fire a single shot. Blood began to soak her shirt right away, his talons having slid so easily through her skin that he may as well have been cutting butter. I tried to get past him to go to her, but he grabbed me by the throat before I even had time to move an inch. Cassie began chanting a banishing spell, but he was just as swift to dispatch her too. Tenan was still conscious, though, and she began to open fire. She got off two shots before my father moved me into the path of her bullets. The third bullet ripped through my shoulder and, needless to say, she stopped firing, snarling a curse that was as much anger as guilt. “Stop!” I said in a strangled cry. “Stop! Don’t hurt them! I’ll go with you if you don’t hurt them! Touch a hair on their heads and the deal’s off!”

      “Caleb! What are you doing?” demanded Tenan even as Cassie cried out, “Don’t!”

      “None of your tricks, child,” said my father coldly. “I’ll not have your silly human magic keeping me from what’s mine again. Once we strike a deal, you and I, there will be no turning back. Demons don’t make deals lightly, and once made such deals can’t be broken.”

      “No tricks,” I choked out. Really, I had no idea what I was going to do next, but I knew that no matter what, I had to protect Tenan and Cassie. I was never again going to be the helpless boy that stood by uselessly while the people he cared about were being slaughtered. “But I have conditions. That’s how these things work, right? If it’s going to be a deal, you have to give me what I want then I give you what you want.”

      “You are correct,” he said, still skeptical of my sincerity. He set me down on my feet and took a single step back while I composed myself as best I could. I was sore and exhausted from the ordeal I’d already been through, not to mention emotionally wrung out from walking the Old Road. “Speak your terms.”

      “First, I need to check on my companions. If they’re too badly hurt to get out of here then there’s no point in making a deal with you,” I told him, surprised by my own brashness. “If anything happens to them, or they can’t leave the Old Road, then I’ll fight you with every breath in my body until it kills me then you’ll be left with nothing. All these years of waiting and searching will have all been for _nothing_.”

      “Fine, but do it quickly,” he said grudgingly. “It is a measure of my respect for you that I don’t trust you at all.”

      “And will it get me bitch-slapped if I ask what exactly you want me for?” I asked as I moved closer to Tenan.

      “You already know the answer to that, and asking is only a stalling tactic,” replied my father, his lifted eyebrow a silent rebuke.

      “Don’t get your panties in a bunch. I was hoping your answer would be different than what I suspect,” I told him cavalierly. Cassie got up slowly and staggered over to join us. I leaned in and told her quietly, “It’ll be up to you to get Tenan out of here. I can handle the rest after that. Do you have any of your charms on you?”

      “A few, but they’ll do a lot of damage to you if you try to use them,” she whispered back.

      “Just let me worry about that,” I told her with a reassuring smile. I had the t-shirt the doctor had cut off in the hospital half-stuffed in my pocket, and I took it out and applied it to Tenan’s wounds. “This has my blood on it, and that should speed up her healing process a little. Put your hand over it to maintain pressure.” Cassie put her hand over mine, using the motion to covertly slip me a handful of charms written on strips of specially treated and consecrated parchment about an inch wide and three inches long. I leaned in as if trying to get a better angle on the wadded up shirt and slid the charms up my sleeve. They burned my arm, but they weren’t nearly as bad as they would be if they were activated, so I was able to easily keep the pain from showing on my face. “Tenan, can you stand at all?”

      “Please, Caleb, don’t do anything stupid,” she pleaded with me softly as Cassie and I hefted her slowly to her feet. “I’ve gotten kind of fond of you. That means you’re not allowed to ditch me by dying. You hear me?”

      “I hear you,” I told her with an affectionate smile. I wished so badly that I could kiss her right then, but I didn’t dare show more affection than I had already. My father wasn’t the kind of guy you revealed your weak points to, and Tenan had definitely become a weak point for me. “Take care of yourself Tenan. Cassie, when I give you the signal, get gone. Don’t hesitate and don’t look back or this will all be for nothing. When you get back, take care of Tenan’s wounds then summon me. You’re the only one who has the talent to do it. Merry will be able to give you my true name, so use that. All right?” All demons have a true name, even half-breeds like me, and the easiest way to summon or bind a demon was by using that true name. I wasn’t entirely comfortable with trusting my true name to somebody who, until yesterday, had been my oldest, dearest enemy, but her ability to summon me back to the regular, everyday human realm was my only chance of escape if my father succeeded in hijacking me to whatever hellish demon realm he called home. If you wanted to beg for miracles, you had to first take a leap of faith, and I was certainly diving off the high board with this one.

      “Enough of this,” said my father, his rising temper apparent in his tone. “Will we be making a deal or not?”

      This wasn’t the time to test his patience any further. Cassie hadn’t had a chance to say whether she agreed to do as I asked or not. I didn’t even know if what I’d suggested was possible. Sure, Cassie and her clan could summon demons and spirits, but was it possible to summon half-demons by the same methods? If so, how quickly could they call me? It could be minutes. It could be days. I’d just have to put my faith in my oldest frenemy and hope for the best. I returned to my father’s side, my hands in the deep pockets of my leather jacket. Those marvelously deep pockets were where I kept the more portable tools of my trade, and I never left home without them. You can’t be in the evil-fighting business as long as I’ve been without developing a healthy paranoia.

      “State your terms,” said my father.

      “It’s simple,” I began, mustering every ounce of arrogance I’d ever possessed. “I’ll go with you, but in exchange you’ll let them leave first without doing any further harm to them. Once they’re gone, I’m all yours. But if you even twitch an eyelash in their direction, the deal’s off and I’ll self-destruct before I let you take me.”

      “Caleb, no!” shouted Tenan, struggling uselessly against Cassie’s grip. Weak as she was from her wound there wasn’t much she could do. Cassie looked like she wanted to protest too, but she held her piece, tears gathering in her eyes. “You have to stop him! You can’t let him do this!”

      “It’s his choice,” said Cassie, her voice thick with emotion. “We all have the right to decide the sacrifices we make and if the prize is worth the price we pay for it.” Cassie finally got Tenan moving, if grudgingly, and the pair vanished from sight.

      “Well, now that we have come to terms, and your precious hostages are gone, we have a little leisure to talk,” said my father with the sort of smile that made people want to trust someone who should never be trusted. “You asked me before what I want you for, and you and your ignorant teachers and colleagues have come up with the most logical conclusion based on their limited knowledge. However, they’re not entirely correct, and unfortunately your awareness of yourself and what you’re truly capable of has been crippled by the limits of their knowledge. Do you honestly think I would go to the trouble to travel to the human world, not just once, but many times, to seek out the perfect breeders just to create an empty husk to occupy? That’s an unseemly waste of energy I can ill afford to spend. If you wish, think of yourself as the first success in a very long experiment.”

      “Wait . . . you said ‘ _first_ success’, which implies that there were . . .” I stopped, not wanting to finish the statement, and hoping it wasn’t true.

      “Yes, of course, there have been many others before you,” said my father as if the brutalizing of multiple women for the sake of experimenting with breeding a half-demon wasn’t any big thing. “Most of the results were too weak or were in some way deformed. Those that didn’t die shortly after birth, I killed myself since they were really too pitiful to allow to live. But then there was _you_. You were born with real power at your fingertips, not just from me but from your mother as well. Not only that, but you have the physiological reactions and biological instincts of a true demon. In short, you are my crowning achievement. However, you turned out to have a stubborn streak I would be happier without, I must say.”

      “Why? Because I don’t like hanging with monsters that kill the people I care about? I guess I’m just quirky that way,” I retorted with a fey sort of sarcasm.

      “I suppose it’s my own fault for not acquiring you sooner,” said my father with a heavy sigh of regret. “I should have collected you before they had a chance to fully corrupt your mind. That conscience of yours is your greatest handicap. Without it, there is no limit to what you can achieve. But those . . . _insects_ all but crippled you, imposing boundaries and limits on you with their lack of understanding. You can be so much more than what you are now. You can’t tell me that you haven’t longed for freedom, real _freedom_ , all these years. You can’t tell me that you haven’t, just once, wanted to see what it would be like to be your true self, to utilize your abilities to their greatest extent. You could say it’s not true, but you’d be lying. I’ve been watching you for far too long not to know you. I know how much you hate the way they talk about you, the way they look at you with fear and disgust and hatred. I know how much it exhausts you pretending to be one of those sheep day after day. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”

      And, much as I wanted to pretend otherwise, he was right. I did hate the constant effort of blending, of putting on that mask every single day and the constant vigilance it took to maintain it. I hated acting like I was weak so that the normal humans around me wouldn’t catch wind of the monster I hid inside me. Just like he said, I was a wolf among sheep and if the sheep ever suspected it, I could lose everything – maybe even my life. After all, wolves may be scary but the sheep outnumbered them a hundred to one. Not exactly my idea of good odds for picking a fight.

      “What I’m offering you is the freedom you so desperately crave,” said my father, his eyes glowing brightly now. “I’m offering you the chance to learn from me, to stand at my side and taste true power. Then, when I feel you’ve learned all that you need, I will let you loose on the human world to do as you please. The only catch is that I expect you to act as my right hand. Demons can’t exist in the human world without a vessel, as you know. I could find a vessel easily enough, if I choose. But then I will make myself vulnerable to the other powers that exist in the human world. I also cannot guarantee that, while I’m gallivanting in the human world, some ambitious individual won’t snatch my own realm from me. That I can’t and won’t abide. I won my realm through centuries of craft and guile and calculated destruction. I will not lose it now to carelessness. But with you by my side, I will have the luxury of being in two places at once. I will gain the foothold in the human realm that I wish for, and you will gain power over a realm of your own, which is what every demon craves. We both win.”

      I couldn’t help but think, for a second, about what it would be like to learn real control over what I am and what I can do. I wondered if I could maybe be capable of more than I was aware of. I wondered if, having been blinded by the fear and prejudices of those around me, I had shut my eyes to my own potential. My power, my natural abilities, stemmed more from my father’s blood than my mother’s, and that wasn’t generally a part of me that anybody was anxious to encourage. And they had taught me to fear myself just as hard as they feared me. But what could I do if I finally accepted the other half of myself? What would happen if I just cut myself a little slack, stopped looking at myself as a monster and started looking at myself like a person as capable of monstrous deeds as any other person. After all, some of the most evil monsters I’d ever met tended to not be actual monsters at all, they were human. It was a serious eye-opener.

      Then I remembered what I’d said during Aunt Merry’s reading. I’d clearly been having a vision of some sort, whether I could remember it or not, and such visions never lied. That was a simple fact of precognitive abilities. What gave such visions their reputation for inaccuracy were the mistaken interpretations of the visions. Seers often had a hard time explaining what they saw, making a simple vision into a seriously cryptic conversation. That was why Aunt Meredith used the tarot cards, to help her explain the visions she had so she could cut down the chance of misinterpretation. When visions lead to things like automatic writing and what those of us in-the-know call trance speaking – which is describing a vision or expressing a prophecy while in a trance-like state – the interpreting becomes even iffier because those doing the interpreting tend to get mired down by the words and forget to take into account the underlying vision. For trance speaking to be as clear as my little episode was is extremely rare, but not unheard of. That meant that two conclusions could be drawn from my vision. One, without the vision itself to give additional or conflicting context to the words spoken, the words became the only lead to go on. Two, dear old dad was full of it. He really wanted what we originally supposed he wanted, and the rest of what he’d been spouting was a pile of bullshit molded into the appearance of something acceptable or even desirable. But, in the end, a sculpture made of bullshit, no matter how carefully crafted, still stank the same as the materials with which it was made.

      Then the question became, what would he gain by selling me this particularly rank but artful load of crap? What could be the reason he felt it necessary to gain my cooperation? Which is the point where I remembered the basic principles of possession. It was possible to possess an unwilling host, but if that unwilling host was of equal or greater power than the being doing the possessing, it was possible for the host body to expel the invading spirit. If what my father claimed about my potential was true, then I might very well be just as powerful as, or more so than, dear old dad. It was entirely possible he could take over only to get kicked out like the unwanted house guest he was. However, if he could gain my trust, even by a tiny margin, he could supplant my will over time, creating a dependent relationship between us. In order to expel an invading spirit, the possessed person must have a certain degree of confidence. Their will had to be unequivocal, unbending. If the victim felt that they were inferior to the assailant, it would sew enough doubt within them to weaken their will. This was a case in which even one crack in even a single stone would bring the whole castle crashing down. It would take time to create the crack in the stone that my father needed, but he had already proven that he could be patient. He had waited almost fifteen years to fetch me then had waited fourteen more to try again. What was a couple more years, give or take, to somebody like him who had already lived centuries?

      Now, the trick was going to be laying down some bullshit of my own. I needed him to believe I was buying his line long enough to get closer to him. I put my hands in my pockets again and hunched my shoulders, to make the motion seem natural, then took a nonchalant step closer to him. “What is it exactly you think you can teach me that I can’t figure out for myself or even find another teacher for in the human realm?” I asked him and the smile he gave me was that charming smile he’d put on before, and for a second, just a second, I almost believed that my assessment of his true intentions was wrong. But then I remembered that he had once wooed my mother with that same smile, and many other women before her, luring them in only to rape them and leave them pregnant with half-monsters like me. No, I would _not_ be lulled by that smile anytime soon. I could never forget what this _thing_ was truly capable of. My own birth was all the evidence I needed to condemn him.

      My father took a seemingly casual step closer to me, still wearing that infuriating smile. “To begin with, I can teach you how to change forms at will. Right now, you can only make use of your demon form when you’re angry or distressed, but I can teach you how to use it intentionally. You would also be able to avoid changing when you don’t want to. You could even maintain your ability to reason while in your second form, an ability I believe you’re currently lacking,” he told me, and he almost had me hooked all over again. I’d give anything for that sort of control. I had to give myself a good hard mental shake to keep from giving in right there. “I can also teach you how to walk between the realms at will. You have the potential to do so, but it’s been blocked. I recognize your mother’s touch in this. She never wanted you to be able to roam through the realms so you wouldn’t fall victim to demons in search of a good vessel to hold them or flesh of a powerful being to consume. You’d be an irresistible prize to other demons, so it wouldn’t have been safe for you to wander unchecked in your early years. However, I believe you’re old enough now that such a block is no longer necessary. If you’ll allow me to approach, I can remove it now rather easily.”

      If he could really do something like that – if _I_ could really do what he said I could – then I wouldn’t need to wait for Cassie to summon me. I could leave whenever I wanted. “All right, let’s do it then. Consider this your chance to prove your intentions. If I let you get close and you do only what you say you’ll do without hurting me, I can maybe start to think you intend to keep your word.” It was a gamble, really. I was offering him what he ultimately wanted –my trust – in exchange for a weapon I could use to get myself out of the mess I’d got myself into. Then again, it was a gamble on his part too, since it was possible I could bunk out as soon as he freed me up to do so, leaving him empty-handed yet again. He must want his prize pretty badly to be willing to take such a chance.

      “Very well then,” said my father, pleased. “I’ll remove that block for you, and if I find other useless blocks, I will remove those too. You’ll never reach your potential with all those silly boundaries hemming you in at every step. Are you fine with that?”

      “As long as it doesn’t harm me, then yeah, I’m fine with it,” I said warily. He approached me as slowly as a man might approach a spooked horse, his hands held out to his side to show that he was unarmed, his talons retracted and no other weapons in his hands. He stopped when he was within inches of me then put his hand over the wound caused by Carla’s attempt to bind me. I didn’t feel anything at first, but then the area where his hand rested began to tingle and then to sting. It wasn’t bad, but it was irritating. Then he put his other hand on my head, the heel of his palm resting on the bridge of my nose. Suddenly, all of my breath rushed out in a whoosh as my senses became flooded with so much information that it all blended together into an incomprehensible mess, a sensory soup so thick the ingredients couldn’t be identified. It was over as suddenly as it began, and I dragged in a sharp breath that made my whole body shake.

      My father stepped back with a triumphant sort of smile that gave me the shivers, and he asked me, “How do you feel?”

      Really, I felt like I’d been hit by truck, but after a few seconds had passed I found that I was actually feeling pretty good. I had never noticed how truly exhausted I had become after all the years of struggle and strife, because I had no real memory of being anything other than tired. But, now, for the first time in my life, I felt strong and healthy and somehow . . . whole. It’s like something had always been missing, something I hadn’t even known was gone until somebody came along and gave it back to me. I realized then that, up to now, I had been living as a ghost of my true self, and here at last was the true self the ghost had been pretending to be. It was exhilarating. “I feel amazing,” I said honestly, a bit humbled by the feeling of being whole at last. “I never knew. They hid so much from me. How could I have never noticed?”

      I closed my eyes, and I could almost see it, a map laid upon a map laid upon map, the pattern repeating into infinity and yet each was discernible individually. I could choose one map and say, _here, this is this realm_ and know what was there and how to reach it. I didn’t have names for the realms or the places within them, but I knew that all I had to do was imagine those maps, choose a point and away I’d go. Unlike real demons, or even real humans, I wasn’t limited to one realm because as a demi human, I belonged to none of them. That was something else I could feel with startling clarity. I was something unnatural, something never meant to exist. Nature itself was repulsed by my existence. Things like me should never be allowed to be born. And yet, here I was, alive and breathing and able to defy the laws of nature if only because my existence itself was outside of those laws. It was heady and heartbreaking and strange beyond imagining, all this knowledge and power. But, still, there was something I knew I had to do. I was grateful for what he had done for me, but he was still a murderer and a monster, and getting rid of monsters was the only thing I knew how to do. Father or no father, this douche bag had to go.

      I made sure my expression remained just as dazed, just as off-guard, as it had been since the moment he’d removed those blocks. By allowing myself to look vulnerable, I was setting _him_ off of _his_ guard. He would never expect a threat to come from someone so seemingly unaware. I even closed my eyes and let the dizziness I’d been feeling all along take over enough that my knees went a little weak. He reached out to support me so I wouldn’t fall, and that single moment of almost fatherly concern was soon to be his downfall. One of my hands had still been in my pocket, and I wrapped it around an ampule of holy water. The ampule was protected so that I wouldn’t accidentally burn myself on it, but once the ampule was uncorked all bets were off. This time I didn’t bother with the cork. I simply slapped it against his forehead so hard that the ampule broke like a water balloon and holy water washed over his face and eyes, sizzling as it went. Steam rose, and he screamed as much from surprise as pain and swiped blindly at the air where I had been.

      I didn’t know quite how to use my new power effectively, but it was easy enough to move across a space a few steps long. I moved in close again and laid one of Cassie’s charms on his chest then vanished again. This time I reappeared a little off target, but not far enough off to take me out of the fight – I’d have to be more careful with my aim next time. My father was howling and losing his human form, becoming the hideous monster he truly was – black skin marred by thin bright red veins like webs made by a schizophrenic spider, eyes blacker than his skin but with that glowing red center, black hair that hung past his waist, teeth sharp and glittering white, and long black talons tipped with red as if perpetually dipped in blood. His form was horrifying and yet still somehow beautiful in the way that exploding stars were beautiful – destructive and dangerous and yet awe-inspiring in their splendor. His face was mottled by patches of bright pink everywhere the holy water had touched, the burns raw and deep enough that they bled. I moved in again and laid the second charm and my father howled again, his swipe a little more successful this time. His talons scored my arm, cutting even through the thick leather of my jacket. I hissed and hurried out of range to regroup. I still need to stick him with at least two more charms before the array was complete, and I was running out of time. He’d only stay blinded for so long.

      If it had been Cassie laying these charms, she’d have activated each one as she laid it on him. I didn’t have that option. Activating them was going to seriously damage me, and as weakened as I was it would be more damage than I could take. I wouldn’t be able to complete the spell. So, I’d have to move fast, and pray I could get all four charms set before he could gather the gumption to rip them off. Moving in again I laid the third charm on his left shoulder and this time he dropped to one knee. I got lightly grazed by a talon, but it barely did more than rip my pants. I’d had worse paper cuts. One more to go.

      That’s when the scene around us began to degrade. Remaining on your path on the Old Road required total focus, but I’d been so focused on taking down my father that I was beginning to lose my anchor. By sending away Cassie, I’d given up the one person that could have kept me moored to my path if my focus uprooted. If I lost my focus any more than this, I would become entirely lost. But there was no choice. This had to be done. Even if I lost myself, it would be worth if I could ensure that this one monster would never again destroy another life. It was like Cassie had said. We all had to decide our own sacrifices, and if the prize at the end was worth the price we’d have to pay to get it. I would pay any price and count it cheap if the prize was that my father would no longer draw breath. I darted in one more time and laid the fourth charm, immediately barking out the spell to activate them and following it with an exorcism layered within a binding. Combining those spells would be enough to take down a horde of demons, so this one solitary bastard never stood a chance.

      He screamed and screamed as his core itself ignited and he was consumed by fire from the inside out. The air was rife with the fetid odor of burnt meat and scorched hair, and the sight of him being consumed made me want to puke. I wanted to be anywhere but there, and yet I forced myself to stay and watch until the end. He continued screaming until his throat was too raw to produce anything more than a hoarse croaking, but even then it went on and on. I was relieved when his throat was finally consumed too. His flesh dropped off in chunks, leaving behind exposed and blackened bones, and yet still he lived. Demons were damn near immortal, after all. It wasn’t surprising that it would take a while for him to die. Every time it looked like the fire was starting to cool, I’d drop another charm on him and activate it, even after my own throat became raw and anguished. I even coughed up blood, but I wouldn’t relent until the last of his bones had been reduced to ashes. I pulled silk pouch out of my pocket, dumping out its contents into my pocket and filling it instead with the slimy ashes of my finally dead father. Luckily, there wasn’t much left – not nearly enough to justify the amount of mass that had been burned – because it wasn’t a very big pouch. Once I’d gathered as much as could fit in the pouch, I stuffed my last charm in there with him, sealed it up tight and threw it as far as I possibly could. Who said those football skills would never come in handy again?

      Satisfied and exhausted to my core, I sank to my knees. The scene around me was almost entirely degraded, the remaining details fuzzy around the edges as they succumbed to the creeping darkness. Though calling it simply “darkness” was a bit misleading. It would be more accurate to call it pure nothingness, but somehow it seemed hungry and desperate to consume everything that could be considered “something”. This place too was quickly changing from something to nothing. Would the same thing happen to me? Probably would, but I no longer cared. I’d done something I had never imagined I would live long enough to be able to do. I had destroyed the darkness that had cast its shadow over my life ever since my conception. I’d obliterated it beyond redemption. No one would ever have to suffer for his precious experiment ever again. For the first time ever, I felt like a genuine cape-wearing superhero. But now it was time to rest. I laid down in the growing darkness and closed my eyes. I was so tired I figured I’d just close them for a minute, just a quick nap to regain my strength . . .

      I woke up confused by the light peeking in around thick curtains into an otherwise dark room. I was alone in a soft bed, covered by equally soft blankets. I hurt everywhere, which was to be expected. What wasn’t expected was that I had _woken up_ in the first place. I really had been entirely convinced that I wasn’t going to make it home from the Old Road. And yet there was no doubt that I was right back on good old _terra firma_. The question prickling through my mind like pins and needles in a sleeping limb was how had I got back? Furthermore, where in the hell was I?

      A door opened and I tried to sit up to see who was coming in, but I found that I couldn’t even lift my head let alone the rest of me. “You’re awake!” exclaimed the shocked voice of Tenan as something crashed to the ground. She rushed to my bedside and leaned over me, wrapping her strong arms around me, and I breathed a heavy sigh of relief. She had made it back safely after all. I’d shoved that worry to the back of my mind while I’d been confronting my father, but now that I knew she was safe the relief of that single discovery left me shaking and breathless. The hug was painful, sure, but welcome nonetheless. I just wished I had the strength to return the favor. “Thank God,” she whispered, making me sneeze. More than the pain of that sneeze – which, by the way, _hurt like all bloody hell_ – I was concerned about the sound of tears in her voice. What had happened while I was out? “Sorry,” she said, chagrined. “But you scared the hell out of us. Really. We were starting to wonder if you’d wake up at all.” I tried to ask her how long I’d been out, but I found I couldn’t get a single word out past the agony in my throat. This was no good. I suck at charades. When she lifted her head I could see the tracks of fresh tears and winced. Tenan wasn’t a crying over her man sort of girl at all, and it was disconcerting seeing her like that. “Can’t talk?” she asked, quickly wiping her cheeks and grinning at me. “Maybe some water might help. Hang on. I’ll go get it.”

      She returned pretty quickly with the promised glass of water, but she also had guests in tow – namely Meredith, Cassie, and, surprisingly, Debbie Hitler . . . er, Hilter. Debbie immediately moved past the other three women, a large black case in one hand. She set it on the nightstand and opened it, producing a blood pressure cuff and stethoscope and a number of other bits of worrying medical paraphernalia. She ran me through the whole work-up, from blood pressure to temperature to shining a light in my eyes. She was very brisk and impressively businesslike about the whole thing. “How are you feeling?” she asked, taking the glass of water from Tenan. She supported me with one surprisingly strong arm and put the glass to my lips. I drank a sip of the water, but it burned like acid going down so a sip was all I was going to take.

      “I’ve been better,” I rasped out, my voice barely audible.

      “Do your injuries hurt?” she asked, and I nodded carefully – it really took a lot of effort just to do that much. “That’s to be expected. You have cracked ribs, numerous abrasions, and a dozen deep lacerations plus quite a few bruises. You’re pretty tough, but even tough guys can get hurt. Your throat has been badly damaged, too. It looks like you’ve been gargling battery acid, to put it bluntly. But the worst part . . . well, there’s no nice way to say it. You’ve been in a coma for over a week.”

      Well, that explained why Tenan would be crying. I actually felt a little guilty for putting her and Merry and Cassie through that. “Sorry,” I croaked.

      “Why are you apologizing, dummy? It’s not your fault,” said Debbie, looking as if she wanted to punch me in the arm like she used to when we were teenagers. “When it became obvious that you wouldn’t be waking up right away, Cassie asked me to come over and help take care of you. I wanted to put you in the hospital, but they begged me to keep this hushed up. But if you had stayed out much longer, there wouldn’t have been any other choice. You really have the devil’s own luck, J.C.”

      I couldn’t help but laugh, though it came out as more of a pained wheeze. Cassie snickered too, while Tenan’s lips twitched as she held her own snickering in check. Merry just smiled as serenely as she always did. “You don’t know the half of it,” I rasped. “And thanks, Deb, for helping out.”

      “No problem,” said Debbie, her cheeks lighting up with a surprisingly bright blush. “You’ve always been a good guy – a little unapproachable, but still a really good guy. It’s up to us sideliners to help the good guys when we can. Now, drink this. It’s just lidocaine, but it’ll numb your throat for a little while. You can have more every three hours, but no more than eight doses in a twenty-four hour period.”

      Debbie dosed me, fluffed my pillows, and arranged them so I could sit up a little more then retreated, taking her black case with her and leaving me alone with my frenemy, my girlfriend, and my late mother’s best friend. “So, what happened after Jodi and I booked it?” asked Cassie, sitting in a nearby recliner. The position and location of the chair gave me the impression that it had been put there specifically for the purpose of offering comfort to those watching over me while I slept. “All the charms I gave you are gone, so I assume you used them. Is that why your throat is shredded, from reading the activation spells?”

      “Pretty much,” I told her, coughing weakly to clear the tickle from my throat. I told them, painfully and slowly, of the events that had transpired once they’d left me alone with my father. I could tell that Cassandra was impressed by my daring deeds of heroism. I think I was a little impressed too. Who’d have thought I’d have the stones to pull off that sort of thing. Overall, it was gutsy in the extreme. I could have died. I very nearly _did_ die, actually.

      “So your real father is dead? Like, completely dead, not just banished?” asked Cassie, her eyes searching my face for something – maybe some shred of regret, or maybe just wondering if I was possessed and lying about dad’s demise. But I wasn’t possessed and didn’t feel any regret, not even an inch of it. I felt only purest relief. The nightmare was finally over. Maybe now I could start really living my life. No more running. No more changing my name. No more hiding away for fear of the eyes that might be watching. I was free at last, and actually feeling a little choked up about it.

      “He’s really most sincerely dead,” I replied with a sigh and a smile. “And just to be sure, I stuffed most of his ashes in a bag with one of your charms and chucked him out into the nothingness of the Old Road. Even if he can somehow come back from being burnt down to nothing, he’d be trapped in the nowhere places between paths. One way or another, he’s never coming back.” I gave her a full on grin. “The only thing that could make this moment better is a good scotch, a big screen TV, and a bucket of ice cream.”

      “Well, you’re out of luck for the TV and the scotch, but the ice cream might be doable,” said Tenan, sitting on the edge of the bed and leaning to rest her arm on the pillow behind my head. She kissed me soundly, with heat enough to prove just how happy she was that I was alive. “You did good, kid. You did good.”

      “Yeah, you did a lot better than I expected,” said Cassandra, all at once embarrassed for reasons I couldn’t even begin to guess at. Sometimes women simply baffle me. She covered it by explaining some of what they’d discovered while I was sleeping. It really had been my father that had gotten to Carla, but just not directly. After all, the sight of his face alone would have been enough to throw her into a full on fit. Instead, he’d enthralled one of the nurses at PC – a sweet little old lady, of all people. He’d laid some serious mojo on her to skate her past Cassie’s wards, and Cassie was deeply apologetic for the slip up. I didn’t really blame her. That sort of thing happens to even the best of us. I hated that it happened to my poor sister, who had already suffered enough as is, but still it was the sort of mistake that could have happened to any of us. It wasn’t nearly enough to get her hero cred revoked, and I made sure she knew that. She also firmly reassured me that she’d checked over all of the staff at PC and even a few of the vendors who supplied their food and necessaries. Once she was sure they were all clean, she’d laid yet more protections over my sister, her room, and the hospital itself. She hadn’t known when she’d cast the new protections that the threat had been eliminated, but whether he was around or not hardly mattered. Even with my father out of the picture, I was still glad of the safety measures. Somebody like my sister who had been attacked by a demon once had a higher likelihood of being attacked by demons again. More than that, my father isn’t my only enemy. Better safe than sorry where Carla’s concerned.

      After that conversation came the really bad news. Cassie and Merry informed me of the changes they could see in me thanks to dad’s remodeling efforts. I now looked a lot more like him than I had before, a fact which was confirmed by a look in a hand mirror. Seeing his face looking back at me from the mirror nearly gave me a heart attack – figuratively, not literally, but close enough as to make no never mind. Many of the little flaws that had been indicators of my humanity were gone. When I dropped my masks to get a good look at my hidden face, my inner monster, I was a little relieved that my skin wasn’t jet black, but I did see those mad spider webs of red veins, along with a brighter red glow in my eyes, sharper teeth, and red tipped talons that were longer and more brutal than anything I had managed before. The fact that I was able to drop and replace my masks again so easily was another testament to the changes he’d wrought in me. However, layered among the bad and the straight weird was the new power I could still feel glittering in the back of my mind, just waiting for me to tap into it. It wasn’t the only new power either, but there would be time enough to explore all that later. Really, only time would tell if these changes were for better or worse, but good or bad I’d just have to learn to live with it all, just like I’d done with the rest of the weirdness in my life.

      “Well, you can rest here as long as you want,” said Cassie once we were all done with the rehashing and the Q & A. “It’s going to be a while before you’re recovered enough to go home. It’s cool with me if you use this place until then. Besides, I could use a hand with some of the craziness in this area.”

      “Then I look forward to working with you,” I told her with a dry smile.

      Before that fight with my father, I had wanted to get out of my hometown as fast as my feet could carry me. I hated revisiting the past because it had become horribly tainted by the deaths I had been powerless to prevent. But now? Now I was actually looking forward to hanging around a bit longer. Looking back at the past often does more harm than good. It’s there only to make sure we mind the lessons we learned from the mistakes we made before. However, there’s a reason that memories fade over time. That’s because looking too hard at the past only distracts you from the future laid out before you. Once upon a time, I’d had a loving family, a good home, and a handful of close friends – and a gaggle of enemies to keep me honest. It had been a good life, but just because that happy time was over didn’t mean I couldn’t carve out a new happiness now. I had a beautiful girlfriend, a handful of friends close enough to call family, a comfortable home, and a job I liked doing – most of the time. Asking for anything more would just be plain greedy. Really, if my future is anything like my present, then it’s looking pretty good from where I stand. It was time to start looking forward to what was coming rather than fighting to forget what was gone. It was past time to lay the past to rest.

 

THE END


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